


Sun Poisoning

by fElBiTeR



Category: Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Fluff, Heartache, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Jealousy, Kissing, Lack of Communication, M/M, Or Is It?, Pining, Sort Of Kind Of A Slow Burn, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Spoilers, Unrequited Love, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:48:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25759855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fElBiTeR/pseuds/fElBiTeR
Summary: It’s common knowledge. When you first make skin to skin contact with your soulmate, their name will appear somewhere on your body.Or, Alex tries to navigate his life after he gets his soulmate mark, sleek and black and gorgeous with a name that doesn’t make much sense, until it suddenly does.
Relationships: Yassen Gregorovich/Alex Rider
Comments: 126
Kudos: 325





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> uhh here’s a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1P6Av9F6S9t0KNXLbW6Gsy?si=d2JdySAlQoOGO6jsDBzaGQ) I made to listen to while reading from start to finish if you want

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sort of the unconventional-ish soulmate au that no one wanted? there's potential spoilers up to crocodile tears, but they're not super explicit or in your face :))
> 
> I hope you enjoy!<3

Alex looks forward to getting his soulmate mark like the other millions of little British schoolchildren in primary school, eyes shining enthusiastically as they listen to a soulmate specialist come in and give them what is initially a very formal, curated talk until tens of curious tiny hands shoot up every couple of minutes and the woman switches over to a casual Q and A session.

“It’s simply wonderful,” the woman says with that very same sparkle in her eyes, mirroring all the children in the room, a dreamy quality in her voice, and a little pep in her step. “Better than ice cream on a hot, blistering day, better than your mum or dad picking you up early from school, better than spotting an extra Christmas present under the tree, better than anything your wonderful little imaginative brains can think of! Picture another person, except they’re made for you, and you for them, someone special who will love you, no matter what. They’ll give you butterflies in your stomach and the courage to do anything that you couldn’t do before! Just wait until you see.” 

After she leaves, all of Alex’s schoolmates take turns enthusiastically shaking hands and grabbing one another until Claire and Alyssa both gasp from the quiet reading corner, the little area sectioned off from the rest of the spacious classroom for reading with the small bookshelf, practically covered top to bottom in holographic stickers obscuring the grainy oak brown material of the wood and the flattened red, yellow, and blue bean bag chairs that Alex has never tried sitting on tucked away to the side. Needless to say, it was nearly impossible to pry them off of each other afterwards.

Alex goes home that day and tells all this to Ian, just before the man leaves for another long business trip. Ian sits him down and explains to him that the woman was highly exaggerating and that in reality, people easily miss their soulmates and may never meet them at all. There are, in fact, many cases of people having one-sided soulmate marks, apparently.

“There’s no electricity when you first make that skin to skin contact,” Ian explains to him. “You could accidentally touch someone in an airport and never see them again.”

Alex doesn’t ask Ian if his parents were soulmates. He doesn’t ask Ian if he’s found his soulmate, either. He holds on to the specialist’s glowing words and occasionally dreams of a warm hand intertwined with his and soft lips brushing against his forehead.

Alex looks forward to getting his soulmate mark like the other millions of British schoolchildren in secondary school until Ian is killed, and then Alex begins to dread dragging his potential soulmate into his whole mess with MI6.

Better to never meet them, he thinks, than to give MI6 more ammo to blackmail him with.

***

When Alex first sees Yassen Gregorovich, his immediate thoughts of him are that the other man is brutally efficient and cold. Then he notes the grace and weightlessness in the assassin’s movements, like a dancer, the way he almost floats over to the dockworker before unloading a bullet into him. The sight and the explosive crack etches itself into Alex’s mind as he sits, curled up and holding his breath, secretly tucked into the back compartment of a truck, speeding away from the scene.

Later on the roof after Herod Sayle, when Alex is seconds away from getting shot, he stares and stares and stares at the icy ocean-blue of Yassen’s eyes, the way he almost looks amused after Alex tells him that he’s going to kill him, like he doesn’t think that Alex really poses any threat.

After a day of proper sleep, the full force of the conversation hits him. It doesn’t make any sense. Though Yassen was employed by Sayle, it seemed like he was working for a larger, more looming organization, one with the power to give even Yassen Gregorovich orders. Alex demolished Sayle’s plans and Yassen knew that he was doing it for MI6. Surely the assassin knew that MI6 would employ Alex again, possibly ruining any future endeavors of his organization? Logically, Alex would most definitely be a future annoyance, even if he wasn’t a threat. Yassen killed a man for dropping a box that didn’t even dent. Why wouldn’t he kill Alex for more?

There’s something odd, Alex thinks, about the way Yassen looked at him. Like a spark of recognition, of a wistful longing, almost. It was as if he looked right through Alex and at a ghost of the past. 

It is right then and there that Alex realizes Yassen hadn’t truly seen him and was instead looking at something unbeknownst to Alex. Sure, the assassin might have been strangely invested in Alex leaving MI6 and returning to school like a normal teenager, but something tells him that if it were any other agent up on that roof, they would be dead before even laying eyes on the other man.

Yassen didn’t really see Alex.

He probably saw a piece of a memory and not Alex Rider, who still wants to be a professional footballer, Alex Rider, who likes granita and despises horseback riding despite his surname, Alex Rider, who didn’t even want to be on that bloody rooftop for MI6.

And the biggest question of _why_ hangs over Alex’s head like a miserable cartoon cloud that simply refuses to go away. Why not let Herod Sayle kill Alex? Alex’s life is so minuscule and insignificant in the bigger picture of things. Why tell Alex to go back to school? Why talk with him at all instead of getting into that helicopter and flying away? Why had Alex opened his big stupid mouth and told the other man that he would kill him? Why spare Alex after that? Why look at Alex in the way he did? Why, why, why?

The next time Alex sees Yassen, he doesn’t get the chance to ask any of these questions. Instead, he’s forced to strip and is shoved into a ring with a bull, and Yassen doesn’t even have the courtesy to stick it out until the end. 

It makes Alex want to tear his hair out, for reasons wholly unknown to him until long after he’s indirectly killed Damian Cray with a trolley and suddenly Yassen is involuntarily draped all over Alex, clutching to him, bleeding out profusely onto Alex’s hands, onto Alex’s clothes, and onto the collapsing floor of Air Force One, dark, dark thick red, almost black if Alex blinks for longer than he normally should, and somewhere whispering at the back of Alex’s head is Ian Rider, explaining the implications of seeing blood in darker shades and something about arterial bleeding, and then Alex spots the location of the gunshot wound and _oh_ , he thinks, _Yassen is done for_.

Something inside him splits at the seams, twisting and turning against the inevitable, watching this seemingly invincible man struggling to breathe, struggling to—Yassen weakly clasps at Alex’s bare wrists, the first physical contact they’ve ever had, staining them that very same heavy tint of red, but the assassin’s voice comes out miraculously level and steady and clear, telling Alex that he knew his father and that MI6 had him killed, a sorrowful glaze to his rapidly fading blue eyes and his voice still frustratingly calm like he hasn’t just dropped a bomb on Alex and completely flipped his world around with a single sentence.

And then Yassen says, “In a way, I loved him. I love you too, Alex. You are very much like him. I’m glad you’re with me now,” and then there’s a spasm of pain in his face and something about Venice, Scorpia, and destiny that Alex doesn’t quite care about at that moment because his chest seizes with an ugly, muddled mix of several unnamed emotions. 

Whatever pain, whatever ache Alex feels from his own injuries is no match for the numbing burn in his heart when Yassen closes his tired, pale blue eyes for the final time, and then the numbness flares like a supernova, quiet and explosive and soul-strangling as Alex succumbs to the sweetness of unconsciousness, _I love you too, Alex, I love you, I love you, I love you_ echoing down a slippery spiral and into the noir void, the aftermath of a billion stars imploding into dust and birthing a brand new longing for the sun in Alex’s slow, beating heart.

***

When afterwards comes, Alex doesn’t know if he should be shocked or not.

When afterwards comes and he’s dead-exhausted and about to crawl into bed, slipping into a more comfortable pair of trousers, he sees it: stark black lettering against his pale skin, pale from the lack of sunlight, right there, neatly printed between his knee and outer thigh, black as the blood that seeped layers deep into his skin from when his fingers were pressed against a wet bullet wound. 

Afterwards comes and Alex finds himself scrubbing the dark crimson stains from under his fingernails and in between his fingers and dripping down his forearm in the bathroom, over and over again, furiously scrubbing them clean and irritated and bright pink in a different way. He steps under his shower and sprays the discreet coppery metallic scent from his tongue, his gums, his lips until he can no longer smell anything but hot steam and soap. He rubs at his eyes with the heels of his palms until he stops seeing ice-blue eyes melting into pain and fondness, no longer hidden under a cold demeanor, until he begins to see black spots.

Afterwards, he steps out still dripping wet and mouths to the fogged mirror, _I love you too, Alex_. He wipes away the condensation with his bare fingers, each rub producing a squeak and revealing more and more of himself in the reflection.

Alex’s face is screwed up into an involuntary bewilderment, confused furrowed brows, tense creases on his forehead, and mouth slightly parted, ready to burst with questions that no one can answer. He looks wide-eyed and haunted, with dark circles just under his eyes.

After all those afterwards, just before he sleeps, Alex Rider finds the name of his soulmate permanently marked onto him.

_Yasha Gregorovich_

And suddenly, he can no longer sleep.

***

Alex deliberates very carefully over the soulmate mark. Firstly, MI6 can never know, _ever_. Alex buys bandages, lots and lots of bandages and keeps the name tightly under wraps, quite literally. 

Secondly, he thinks up a storm. Questions such as _Who have I touched?_ and _Who’s touched me?_ cross his mind, but in the end, Alex doesn’t actually need them.

Last name, Gregorovich, first name Yasha. There are no metaphysical connections between soulmate marks. Just as you won’t feel when it blossoms into fruition, you won’t feel when it withers and dies. The mark stays forever, even beyond death's clutches.

Alex’s conclusion is a very simple one. A very painful one. 

Thirdly, he can’t stop thinking about the other man and the color draining out of Yassen’s eyes and skin and drifting into the pallid palettes of an ashen grey, a color very close to death. Alex is near enough to see the assassin’s eyelashes splayed delicately against his cheeks, fluttering when Yassen blinks, spending longer and longer with his eyes closed through each pass, obscuring the dimming blue of his eyes. 

_Yassen_ , Alex thinks when he wakes up.

 _Yassen_ , Alex thinks before he sleeps.

He thinks that this isn’t normal, even for people with dead soulmates. 

Then again, Alex has never been quite normal, either.

 _Are you mine?_ Alex never gets to ask, constantly touching at the beautiful raven ink-black name etched onto his right thigh, right above his knee.

For the two weeks MI6 allows for him to attend school after the fiasco with Damian Cray, Alex keeps a hand resting on his right leg all throughout his classes, the mark a constant reminder under his palm and through a layer of fabric, through his uniformed trousers. He stares at it in wonder for hours before he goes to bed. _Are you Yasha? Are you mine?_

And then one day he’s had enough. He wakes up on the wrong side of bed, the wrong side of a lost childhood, and suddenly the previously muted barbs of his schoolmates increase tenfold in volume, stinging hooks digging deep into his skin. Alex can barely refrain himself from snapping at the low whispers and thrown glances when rumors begin to circulate about how he probably found his soulmate, dead in a ditch or also a druggie or something much _worse,_ none of them trying to be subtle at all. 

But yet. They’re just normal teenagers and Alex is the odd one out. It’s not like they’re too far off from the truth, anyway.

Mrs. Jones speaks to Alex by the Thames and Sabina leaves. Alex is exhausted.

“Venice, Scorpia, destiny,” Yassen had said, his final wishes for Alex, his last words.

Alex goes to find all three, and his world is completely flipped once more, tilting unsteadily on its axis, barely held down by the gravity of the sun.

***

Just as Alex was unsure whether to be shocked or resigned when he initially saw his soulmate mark, he doesn’t know how he should react when he learns that Yassen Gregorovich is not dead and is, in fact, very much alive. This is months later, after Alex follows the words of a supposedly dying man and ends up in a place where nearly everyone wants him dead, and they almost get what they want, too, if not for the luck of the devil that enjoys following Alex around everywhere he goes and only appears in the direst of situations after he’s already been put through the wringer. The devil’s luck indeed.

It’s so mundane, the way Alex finds out.

He isn’t on a mission for MI6 or getting shot at and seeing a fleeting glimpse of the assassin out of the corner of his eye, nor does he wake up with the business end of Yassen’s gun fixed on his head. In fact, he’s quite sure that MI6 kept this from him on purpose.

The truth of the matter is that Alex is on his way home from school one day, walking, surprisingly unafraid of another attempt on his life. He isn’t even particularly alert or anything, but he pauses at a corner on a red light and turns his head at just the right angle and there Yassen is, dressed in plain black clothes that make him seem less conspicuous than he actually is, holding a white cup of steaming coffee in one hand and the other one free to reach for a possibly hidden gun at any time, exiting the small cafe he bought it from, probably.

It’s an extra hot day, today, the sun beating down on him from overhead, a blazing ball of heat in the sky, painfully insistent on Alex’s back and his hair and his neck, biting at him with each small movement. His school uniform is clinging to his skin and he wants to hurry home and shed it immediately.

Alex laughs, for lack of a better reaction, in either relief of hysteria—he can't quite tell which—and then makes his way across the street and follows the assassin as he ducks into a park. He almost expects for Yassen to instantly turn around and shoot Alex for getting him nearly killed, but Alex is trailing him from a decent distance and he’s learned a thing or two about stealth. 

However, no matter how good Alex is at trailing someone, Yassen is _better_. Better at stealth, better at recognizing danger, better at intuition, better at just being aware, like how Alex swears that Yassen was going to check for someone listening in on him way back during the whole tizzy with Herod Sayle out on the jetty until a dropped container interrupted him. He should have noticed Alex by now.

Something that feels suspiciously like worry blooms in Alex’s stomach, before any real fear for his own life or fear that this might actually be a trap that Yassen set so Alex can get closer and easier to kill. The worry unfurls when Alex gets close enough to reach out and touch the assassin, and suddenly, his hand is doing just that, reaching up to Yassen’s shoulder, except without Alex’s permission—

—Yassen grabs his wrist and _twists_ , sending Alex sprawling to the ground at an inopportune angle, and as he scrambles to get back up on his feet, Yassen, without spilling a single drop of his coffee, prepares to break Alex’s arm in the middle of a public space, poised with an elbow ready to drive down at the joint, hard, until Alex shouts for him to stop, _stop, Yassen, please, stop!_ and the assassin freezes, one hand still tightly gripping Alex’s wrist. Alex honestly should have expected this.

A concerned woman walking her husky comes up to them, eyeing the way Yassen is holding onto Alex hard enough to probably leave bruises later, but Alex stands in between them, doing his best to obscure Yassen’s face from her, and puts on his brightest shaky smile, though it isn’t difficult to fake, considering what just happened. 

“I’m sorry if we made a scene,” Alex apologizes, like he and Yassen didn't just meet for the first time in months a few seconds ago. Not a problem, the woman says, continuing to stare at the way Yassen’s fingers are seriously curled around Alex’s wrist in a death-grip.

“He’s got… he’s got PTSD,” Alex says hurriedly, hoping that he sounds genuine. He’s not even sure if he’s lying or not. “Sometimes he forgets where he is, but he just needs a few minutes to breathe, really.”

The suspicion on the woman’s face morphs into pity, but as long as she’s no longer considering calling any authorities, the danger has passed.

“Have a good day.” As she walks away. Alex waves his free hand at her and her cute dog that he didn’t get to fully appreciate, and he really hopes she doesn’t remember the encounter, for both their sakes.

And then he finally turns his attention to the assassin, who’s staring at Alex like he’s grown three heads or something equally as strange. 

Alex winces. He has no clue how the other man feels about him, especially since he was almost killed because of Alex. Whatever little attachment he had to Alex could be completely severed now, possibly even festering into resentment, and though Alex would really like to say that Yassen isn’t the type for sadistic revenge, he doesn’t actually know anything about the other man.

“Yassen,” Alex says, his voice cracking with emotion. Oh, well. There goes pretending like he’s unaffected. “You can let go of my wrist now.”

Yassen drops Alex’s hand like he's been burned and then averts Alex’s gaze for another minute, looking around the park, anywhere but Alex, saying nothing.

Why is Yassen acting so weird?

Alex’s hand automatically goes to rub the mark above his knee like he does whenever he feels nervous this past couple of months, a bad habit he’s been trying to kick, and then it clicks for him. Yasha Gregorovich. Alex touched Yassen’s bare skin, too, which means that he should have Alex’s name somewhere on him.

Alex suddenly grows nervous. “I think we need to talk.”

Yassen’s gaze finally drifts to Alex, his face as impassive as ever, which Alex interprets as a sign to continue speaking.

“How are you even still alive?” Alex asks, his tone incredulous, unable to contain himself any longer.

The assassin’s brows furrow. “MI6 didn’t tell you?”

“They don’t exactly like me after… after,” Alex says, and both of them know that he isn’t going to explain himself any further. “Why didn’t you notice me following you?”

“It’s the pain medication. I’m still… recovering,” Yassen admits. “I haven’t been as attentive to my connections as I should be. To the rest of the world, I am still dead.” That could mean a million things. That could mean that Yassen has no idea that Alex single-handedly destroyed Scorpia. That could mean that Yassen has no idea that Alex spoke with Ash and learned about the reality of the whole messed up situation with MI6 and Scorpia and John Rider.

If Yassen’s only been amicable this entire time to Alex because of that thin thread of connection, then he certainly isn’t going to be the one to poison the assassin’s impression of John Rider.

Alex bites his lower lip to prevent himself from blurting his next question out loud without restraint.

“What else?” Yassen asks, like he knows there’s something that Alex isn’t quite saying. Alex isn’t as well-versed in the art of keeping a blank expression.

“The thing—you know,” Alex says, sparing himself from embarrassment by being as vague as possible.

“I don’t,” Yassen supplies helpfully in return.

“The sou—The—” Alex stammers, genuinely unable to get the word unstuck from his throat. He tries a few more times, failing each one after the other, and what little patience Yassen has for him seems to be slipping away quickly because of the heat.

Alex glances around to ensure that they’re mostly alone, and then leans forward, tilting his head slightly upwards, and kisses Yassen right on the mouth.

He knows that it’s a mistake as soon as he does it. Yassen’s lips are frozen beneath his, completely unresponsive. Alex immediately backs away and stares at the assassin in an abject horror.

“Alex…” Yassen says, an uncharacteristic expression of shock gracing his features.

Alex doesn’t allow for Yassen to say anything else. He turns tail and flees the scene like a coward, his heartbeat a rapid staccato against his rib cage, the loud pounding of his shoes on the even concrete matching the frenzied throbbing of his heart threatening to jump out of his chest. He probably runs about fifteen blocks or so before his pace begins to drag and he noticeably slows down. 

He takes a risky glance behind him. No Yassen in sight. Only the occasional odd look from passersby.

Yassen wasn’t being weird or purposefully averting Alex’s gaze earlier. He was simply checking for any hidden MI6 agents in the park in case Alex was playing bait to lure him in. Alex projected his own feelings onto the assassin incorrectly and only saw what he wanted to see. God, how _stupid_ of him.

Panting hard, Alex almost finds himself collapsing in the middle of the sidewalk. The combination of his perspiration and the heat burning through his clothing from the sun, the bastard still mockingly winking down at Alex from high in the sky, is almost suffocating. It almost feel like standing behind a bus engine, each breath full of dry fumes. Alex suddenly wants to shoot it down, wants to tear at it, wants to choke the life out of it with his bare hands. 

Instead, all he can do is glare at it, squinting slightly so he doesn’t hurt his eyes.

Alex hates the sun.

How incredibly stupid of him, Alex thinks, to assume that he has a requited soulmate. How arrogant to assume that he’s one of the lucky ones out of everyone on this Earth. How foolish of him to take such a direct approach instead of something more subtle. What he hates most is that, again, he can hear Ian Rider at the back of his head, the man’s gentle, soft-spoken tones explaining this very situation to Alex. What he hates the most is that Ian Rider is dead and haunting him as a faded voice instead of helping him go through this, dead because he was killed by Alex’s unrequited soulmate.

Yassen Gregorovich is one of the best—if not _the_ best—contract killer assassins out there. He is undeniably attractive, undeniably talented, and undeniably ruthless.

Alex is a pitiful teenager playing spy in a grown up’s world. If Scorpia has taught him anything, it’s that he can’t find it in himself to kill the way they do, to remove himself from the situation emotionally and pull the trigger heartlessly.

Alex’s life has been spinning out of control for the last year. He no longer belongs in a classroom, no matter how much he wants to. He has next to no friends. MI6 has him tightly held in between their manipulative fingers and on a short leash.

The gravity of his life has changed. Why not also toss an unrequited soulmate into the mix? 

Alex hopes that the universe is having a good laugh out of this.

A sick lurch of homesickness tugs at his stomach, accompanied by a mild sting behind his eyes. Alex suddenly misses Ian very, very much, even though with each passing day, his memories of the other man grow hazier. In years time, Ian Rider will fade from his head. 

That is, if Alex is still alive by then.

Alex really doesn’t know how he’s made it this far.

He wants to return to a home he doesn’t even have anymore.

What Alex also doesn’t know is that if he had turned around, if he had stayed for just a moment longer, he would have seen Yassen involuntarily raising his fingers to his lips, reliving the shadow of a kiss, coffee entirely forgotten.

The sun makes a fool out of them both that day.

***

“Why didn’t you tell me that Yassen was alive?” Alex asks, when they’re alone in an office in Royal and General Bank. He does his best to sound inquisitive and not accusatory, but from the looks of it, Mrs. Jones doesn’t really care.

“We didn’t find it a detail of importance,” she explains, peppermint oddly absent. “It doesn’t change anything.”

 _It changes everything_ , Alex wants to say, wants to scream, but he doesn’t. He nods, instead.

She briefs him on his next assignment, something quick and simple in Uruguay. An expensive party for expensive people, Alex pretending to be someone’s son, keeping his own first name and age, the same cover story recycled so many times that someone is bound to poke holes all over it eventually. 

MI6 is beyond the point of asking for his permission. Alex doesn’t even expect it anymore.

She gives him several documents with vital information to memorize on the spot. Alex flips through them, scanning each page carefully. All he needs to do is plant several bugs in someone named Nicolas Castro’s hotel room. A weapons dealer. Nothing else. Alex pays special attention to any blueprints and building layouts he sees.

“Do I get to bring anything?” Alex asks.

“We’re sorry,” she says, not sounding very apologetic at all. “Smithers has been rather busy as of late.”

She’s lying to him. Either Alex is still being punished or some people in MI6 are feeling extra wary about him. No toys for the uncontrollable teenage spy. And as always, no gun either.

Fantastic.

“Oh, and Alex? One more thing. It was highly suspected that Gregorovich and your father were soulmates,” Mrs. Jones adds, offhandedly, like an afterthought that doesn’t really matter that much. “If you ever see him again, you can use that to your advantage.”

Alex says nothing. He doesn’t trust his voice.

They give him a date and dismiss him.

Alex goes home in a daze, but as soon as he locks the door to the Chelsea house left to him after Ian’s death and takes several unstable steps towards his bedroom, her words come back full force, harder than any brick wall or train, more painful than any bullet in the chest from a sniper rifle, his stomach rolling violently.

“Gregorovich and your father were soulmates,” she had said, and Alex barely makes to the toilet in time, dropping hard to his knees before he vomits out everything he’s eaten in the past two days, loud, harsh hacking and coughing over smooth, cold porcelain, accompanied by a horrible throbbing inside his skull like someone’s just pistol-whipped him and given him two concussions and maybe decided to kick his head around like a football. 

He heaves and heaves until there’s nothing left but an empty pit in his gut, sour bile burning at the back of his throat, and he keeps heaving after that until most of his soul is in the toilet as well, waves of nausea bowling him over as he struggles to stay on his knees and over the toilet bowl instead of pitifully curling into a tight ball on the tiled floor.

His head feels heavy, like cement. Equally as weighed down, his heart feels like lead.

 _No wonder,_ Alex thinks to his mirror, sick to his stomach. _I look like the spitting image of John Rider._

He strengthens his resolve to stop touching his soulmate mark after that.

He keeps it wrapped in bandages almost constantly.

He no longer looks at it.

That way, Alex can almost pretend as if it isn’t there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for reasons pertaining to the horrible quality of my writing, I will now proceed to pass away
> 
> ... also on that note, I,, sort of accidentally abandoned ahorz's writing style and switched to my own and honestly idk if this is any good because it's mostly purely self-indulgent shjsahdhsh yeah sorry 
> 
> (electric love, sun, intermission, r u mine, cardiac arrest, all I want)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *nervous laughter*

Uruguay is, in fact, not quick and simple.

Nobody finds it necessary to tell Alex that Castro is a paranoid bastard, bugging his _own_ hotel room and planting tiny cameras in obscure spots just in case. Just in case for what?

Just in case a teenager named Alex Rider sneaks in, apparently.

Four armed guards rush into the room while Alex is in the middle of planting MI6’s bugs. He sprints towards the window, fully prepared to chance the three-story drop, but he misjudges his reach, clumsily unused to a growth spurt that has rendered half his wardrobe unwearable, and the guards catch him by the ankle before he can fully slip out of the window.

They drag Alex, kicking and screaming like the whiny and ill-tempered teenager that his cover is, all the way down to Nicolas Castro and his personal bodyguard.

Alex wants to groan the moment he’s forced into the room, the door shutting behind him with a firm _click_ , and sees familiar close-cropped hair and cool blue eyes sliding over to meet his. Other than that, Yassen doesn’t make any indication to his employer of their previous knowledge of one another.

Alex lingers at the doorway, unable to recede nor progress, an awful feeling tearing and clawing mercilessly at his insides.

“Why are you here?” Castro asks, curious.

“That’s the big question we all want answered, isn’t it?” Alex mutters.

“You have quite the mouth on you,” the man says. 

A wry smile spreads across Alex’s face. “So I’ve been told.”

“I have no use for mouthy little brats like you,” Castro shakes his head. “I’ve always hated children, stupid, ignorant little gremlins running around and wreaking havoc. Children are like a pestilence. So naive and guileless and disgusting. You can’t do anything without your parents. I bet you have an allowance every week. I bet they let you stay up all night. I bet they were perfect soulmates, too, and told you all these nice stories about how they met. I bet they never hit you, even when you deserved it. Spoiled you rotten. Haven’t your parents ever taught you discipline?” Alex feels a spike of indignant fury course through him.

Alex ignores the fierce look that Yassen shoots him, most definitely a warning for him to keep his mouth shut. Why would the assassin even care? 

A surge of foolish bravado overtakes him. “I dunno. Haven’t your parents ever taught you when to shut up?” Alex says, though not nearly as vulgar as what he wants to really say.

The man’s face darkens immediately, thunderous and infuriated. “Kill him,” Nicolas Castro grits, gesturing at Alex.

“That is unnecessary,” Yassen says. “The boy—”

“—Kill him,” Castro repeats, sneering, cutting the assassin off.

Yassen visibly hesitates, and Castro clenches his jaw impatiently.

Alex hopes that they burn his body. He hopes that the building explodes and becomes engulfed in flames. Alex hopes the sun flares and sends a deathly ray straight for him, instantly incinerating him on contact. Anything at all so that Yassen doesn't see Alex’s soulmate mark after his death. He would like to, at the very least, be spared the post-mortem embarrassment.

Instead, none of the above happens. Yassen unloads one precise bullet into Nicolas Castro’s head, and at such a close range, consequently blowing his brains out of his skull. Alex can’t tear his eyes away, watching the visceral brain matter splatter all over the opposite wall.

It appears that Yassen has learned his lesson from Air Force One.

“Why would you do that?” Alex asks. He’s surprised by how disappointed he sounds.

Yassen stares at the dead body in what looks to be something akin to disbelief. “I don’t know.”

“Great,” Alex says, and then goes to slump down in one of the comfortable, expensive chairs. He sighs. MI6 isn’t due to collect him for another five hours. “I’m guessing you’re off your meds now? All back to normal? I remember when I had to take them after I was shot. It was bloody awful."

“Sitting like that is bad for your back,” Yassen notes, neither confirming nor denying what Alex has just said.

“Okay,” Alex says, with no inclination of moving at all. He closes his eyes instead, giving into a bone-deep exhaustion.

Maybe fifteen minutes pass. When Alex opens his eyes, Yassen still hasn’t left yet.

“Do you want something from me?” Alex slides even further down the chair and into a ridiculous slouch.

“Are you still with MI6?” Yassen asks, eyeing Alex with an unreadable expression, deflecting his question.

“Am I?” Alex says. One of these days, the Russian will shoot him for his smart-mouthed remarks.

Thankfully, Yassen only looks exasperated. “They put you in danger again. Lack of proper information can get you killed.”

“Would that honestly be so bad?” Alex has nearly become one with the chair.

“Alex,” Yassen warns.

“Okay, okay,” he mutters, sitting up properly. He stares at a particularly bright smattering of blood on the wall. “I don’t want to go back to them. Is that what you want to hear? I don’t want to go back to a place that has never given me a choice of yes or no and still doesn’t even trust me with a gun after all this time. I’m completely unarmed today, by the way. I don’t want to go back to a place that has full control of my life and doesn’t give a rat’s arse about me. I don’t. But I _have_ to. There’s nothing else left for me. Spying for MI6 is the only thing I can possibly have a future in.”

Yassen goes quiet for a moment, a contemplative silence. Alex wonders if he’d be able to outrun the armed guards all lined up against the wall outside this door. He’d probably die right away, to be honest.

“The longer you do it, the less likely you’ll have a future at all. Your chances of living past eighteen decrease exponentially the longer you work for them,” Yassen finally says. He still hasn’t holstered his gun.

“Oh yeah, loads of help _you_ are,” Alex glares. “I didn’t need to know the likelihood of my own death, thank you very much.”

He wants to applaud himself for being in the same room as Yassen and not anxiously reaching for his soulmate mark _once_ , even though it feels like it itches, which is silly. It’s probably a psychological sensation. He’s also doing quite a good job at schooling all his expressions into a neutral one even though his face wants to curl into one of heartbreak, mirroring the torrent of conflict inside of him.

“Leave with me,” Yassen suddenly says, no longer dancing around the question, and Alex’s jaw nearly hits the floor in response. “Don’t go back to them.”

“I can’t just up and leave…!” Alex argues weakly, even though, yes he can. _We can leave,_ some part of him says. _We can finally be free of this_.

“Why not?” 

“I’m—I’ve got—” Alex’s voice is very small. He doesn’t have anything. “You’re a killer.”

“I won’t make you,” Yassen says, his tone surprisingly tender. “All I’m doing is giving you a choice.”

His soulmate has just asked Alex to leave with him. How could any part of him say no? How could the part of him that’s been wide-eyed and curious since a soulmate specialist put gold-lined dreams into his head say no? How could the part of him that’s cried itself into exhaustion knowing his soulmate will never have eyes for him say no?

In the end, it really isn’t much of a choice at all.

MI6 burns Alex Rider three days after he takes Yassen’s hand.

***

Neither of them ever bring up what happened at the park.

Maybe Yassen thinks that Alex had a slip up in judgement or a flight of teenage fancy. Maybe Yassen thinks that Alex has a fleeting schoolboy crush. Maybe Yassen doesn’t think anything at all and the incident has already dropped from his mind.

Yassen takes Alex with him on jobs, asks him to do counter-surveillance, and gives him a gun. He never asks Alex to shoot. 

Alex never uses it, but the weight of it against his hip is reassuring. 

He sometimes wonders if he’ll ever need to. He’d like to think that even in the face of certain death, he’d be able to escape without being forced to put a bullet in anyone.

And then he thinks of what he would do if Yassen were held at gunpoint, a few moments from death. The vehement surge of protectiveness Alex suddenly feels surprises him.

Though he wouldn’t shoot someone in self-defense, Alex thinks that he might kill someone for Yassen. It scares him.

 _It won’t ever come to that,_ Alex thinks. _Yassen can handle himself._

The thought continues to scare him, anyway.

***

They settle into a rhythm.

It appears that Yassen is no longer working for Scorpia, instead offering his services as a freelance assassin to employers of his choosing. They fly all over the world, nonchalantly slipping through airport security with falsified passports. Alex complains on the long flights and Yassen listens, for some reason, even nodding along once in a while and adding his own commentary to Alex’s points. 

Yassen doesn’t talk much. Alex fills up the silence with his own voice, sometimes too loud and boisterous even for his own ears. He rambles on and on about himself, all the ‘holidays’ Ian would take him on, which, in hindsight, Yassen points out, weren’t actually holidays at all, like the time he got lost in Bangladesh and spent hours looking for Ian, or the time he was stuck on a snowy mountain in Switzerland and nearly froze to death, or when he was almost lost at sea when his snorkeling gear broke in the Maldives.

“Did you ever have a vacation where something didn’t go wrong?” Yassen asks, the corners of his lips twitching upwards.

Alex opens his mouth to vehemently retort, but Yassen is right. Alex had always thought that Ian’s strange and exotic ‘holidays’ were his way of apologizing to Alex for all the days they didn’t get to see each other because of his work at the bank or to make up for when Ian missed parent-teacher conferences or birthdays or anything else along those lines.

Strangely enough, Alex gets a vivid flashback to when he first visited Royal and General Bank, when he broke into Ian’s ‘office’ and saw the photographs of Alex on his desk, one taken the summer where he had gone diving on the Caribbean island of Guadalupe, and the other, much smaller, of Alex when he was five or six. He remembers thinking warmly that maybe Ian did love him, after all, but just didn’t have the words to say it. Ian Rider was an MI6 field agent. He wouldn’t work in an office. The realization comes to Alex like a bucket of ice water poured down his back. He feels like a fool.

“Alex?” Yassen arches an eyebrow at his sudden silence.

“Nothing,” Alex mutters, answering the assassin’s tacit question. He stays quiet for the remaining duration of the plane ride, wondering if any of it was ever real. Yassen doesn’t push for answers.

They arrive in Sicily with Alex still turning past interactions with Ian over in his head. Sicily smells like eternal sunshine and fresh sea air and rich volcanic soil. A salty, slightly citrusy tang permeates the air everywhere, and Alex catches whiffs of cannoli and sweet pastries from the bakeries they walk past. When Yassen isn’t looking, Alex ducks into a shop and buys the most expensive coffee beans that they have. He knows that Yassen can probably afford them for himself, but it’s the thought that counts, right? They stay in one of Yassen’s many rented flats, first sweeping the premises like they always do before settling in.

Tomorrow is a simple long-distance assassination. 

Usually, Alex refrains from asking too many questions during the other man’s jobs, but when Yassen tells Alex to follow him out of the flat, carrying the cello case concealing a DSR-1 German-manufactured bolt-action rifle with several rounds of ammunition in one hand even though the kill is tomorrow, Alex gives him a look of pure confusion. 

“Come, little Alex,” Yassen says softly, and then promptly exits the flat without looking back to check whether or not Alex is following. Alex only stays frozen for another second before hurriedly trailing Yassen out the door.

Yassen brings him to the doorstep of a shooting range. Alex sneaks a furtive glance at the assassin, excitement sparking in his chest.

“Have you ever done this before?” Yassen asks as they approach a flat, open field, tiny targets on the far end. Alex shakes his head and stares hard at the rifle in Yassen’s hands, restraining himself from grinning enthusiastically.

“You need to check the trigger mechanism, the suppressor, and all the other moving parts ahead of time,” Yassen explains, gesturing at each part as he speaks. He unfolds the bipod and presses it snug against his shoulder. “Make sure that the gun is properly balanced.”

Alex watches each step carefully, drinking in the sight of Yassen nearly lying on the ground in a thin t-shirt to counter the Sicilian heat, his arms toned and his hands deftly loading the rifle with one bullet. Yassen looks through the optical sight, zoning in on his target. “Shoot when you exhale.”

Alex listens. Yassen quietly breathes in, breathes out, and then pulls the trigger.

Alex isn’t surprised at all when Yassen hit the target perfectly. 

“Your turn.” The rifle is pressed into Alex’s arms. Yassen is very fond of this rifle. Alex can tell by the pleased look the assassin gets when he picks it up for use, compared to the other ones he has. Yassen is trusting Alex to shoot with it.

Alex pictures the other man’s precise and practiced motions and does his best to imitate them, lining up the sight with a target on the far end. His eagerness outweighs any nervousness he feels. Yassen is almost silent beside him.

Alex pulls the trigger all the way back, unflinching at the recoil and crack of the bullet, pauses for a moment, and then puts the rifle down, turning to Yassen with a triumphant smile. 

Yassen blinks slowly at him. “Are you certain you’ve never done this before?”

Four more shots later, Yassen actually looks a little bit impressed with him. Something inside Alex preens at the attention and the unspoken compliment, considering the assassin’s meticulous standards.

“I think you are a natural,” Yassen says, shaking his head slightly, as if disbelieving.

“I guess I am.” Alex doesn’t even attempt to tone down his smugness. He prepares to line up another shot, but he suddenly finds himself flat on his arse, his tailbone smarting, only afterwards realizing that Yassen had tucked his foot behind Alex’s ankles and swept his legs out from under him, sending him sprawling to the floor. 

Alex glares at Yassen from his place on the ground. “What was that for?” The rifle is safely tucked away in Yassen’s arms, probably snatched from Alex before he fell with the assassin’s lightning-fast reflexes.

“You have no peripheral awareness when you shoot,” Yassen says, breezily. The sunlight catches off him brilliantly like this, Alex thinks, gazing up at the assassin. Yassen’s blue eyes only thrive under the sun, deepening in color and intensity, and the shadow his jawline casts over his neck and collarbone only serves to accentuate the man’s already attractive features. A flicker of amusement in those eyes snaps Alex out of his reverie. 

“Couldn’t you have just told me that like a normal person?” Alex complains, flushing red, pushing himself off the floor with his palms and rubbing his aching lower back. Yassen shrugs.

Alex’s cheeks are warm, not from the heat of the dry mid-day air, but from embarrassment. Yassen is right. Alex was too caught up in the rhythm of the movements and forgot to watch his back. How lame. How amateurish. 

It serves as a stark reminder of why Alex’s soulmate mark is unrequited.

“Can we go back now?” Alex asks quietly, ducking his head to avoid Yassen’s gaze. 

Yassen frowns at him, but acquiesces, deconstructing the rifle and placing its parts back into the cello case. They leave the way they came, returning to the rented flat without any trouble. Yassen leans the case against a cabinet, takes one look at Alex who’s slumped all over an armchair, and says, “You’re slouching again.”

“Brilliant observation, give us another,” Alex snaps aggressively. He’s a moody teenager. Give him a break.

Yassen offers him an indecipherable look and promptly disappears out the front door again, probably to go surveil the target, leaving Alex and his one-man pity party alone.

Alex sighs out loud as soon as he’s sure Yassen is gone. So maybe harboring complicated possible romantic feelings towards the man who idolized his father and killed his uncle is a bad move. So what? No one ever said that Alex was good at making decisions. 

The fact that Alex has even been able to spend this much time with Yassen is enormous, soulmate or not. He puts a good amount of effort into making sure his eyes never linger too long on the assassin and even more effort into never being trouserless around the other man, less Yassen asks about the bandages near his knee. Alex can’t fake having a debilitating knee injury because he has a sneaking suspicion that Yassen probably has the ability to somehow dig for hospital files, and when he finds nothing, he’ll demand for Alex to show him the extent of the ‘injury’. Alex could reveal half of the truth: that above his knee is his soulmate mark, and maybe Yassen would even leave well enough alone, but Alex doesn’t think he has it in himself to lie about the name to Yassen’s face. All of this conflict can be avoided as long as Alex continues to ensure that Yassen never sees the bandages in the first place.

The front door of the flat creaks open, followed by light footsteps. Alex peers up.

Yassen is back, holding in one hand what looks suspiciously like—Alex’s eyes light up, and he practically trips out of the armchair and floats over to Yassen before snatching the granita from the assassin’s fingers. A spoon materializes in Alex’s right hand, courtesy of Yassen, and a scoop of the dessert ends up in his mouth faster than his brain can begin to question whether it’s poisoned or not.

Alex moans around the spoonful, cold and refreshing and just barely on the side of sweet. If it really is poisoned, then this is definitely one of the better ways to go.

“Is it really that good?” Yassen looks amused. The assassin has managed to quash Alex’s sulky mood without saying a single word. 

Alex’s heart swells with affection for his soulmate.

He removes the spoon from his mouth and carves out a small mound of the yellowish-rose colored ice, raising it up to Yassen’s face. Yassen leans forward and takes the spoon into his own mouth. Alex fights tooth and nail to look absolutely anywhere else other than the sight of Yassen’s chiseled lips wrapped around the spoon.

“Peach?” Yassen asks, licking his lips.

Alex nods into another mouthful of the granita, decidedly still not looking at the other man’s mouth. He returns to the worn armchair while Yassen sets a bag of pastries down on the nearby coffee table. 

“Acireale,” Yassen says in Italian, his pronunciation flawless like that of a native-born speaker’s. “Your father, John Rider, took me there once, a long time ago.”

Alex freezes. Yassen freely gives information about himself as often as Alex thinks about returning to MI6. Which is _never_.

He scoops another spoonful of granita into his mouth and stares into the dessert, hoping that he looks nonplussed.

“In the many places we would go, John always knew his way around the culture and the food,” Yassen admits. “It was crowded when we came to Sicily and very hot while we waited in line at Acireale. John complimented the granita as well.”

The look that Yassen had on his face when they first met each other up on that rooftop is back, almost a forlorn wistfulness for something that was lost. 

Not something. Someone.

 _Oh_ , Alex thinks, the granita in his mouth suddenly growing flavorless, leaving his tongue cold and numb. _What’s so good about granita anyway? It’s just a stupid pile of flavored ice_. He stabs his spoon into the dessert with an unnecessary amount of force.

His fingers are wet from the condensation gathering on the outside of the cup. Alex has lost his appetite.

“Assassins stopping for ice cream,” Alex says, because that’s what his father was, even though he was undercover for MI6. An assassin. A good one, at that, and an even better one than Yassen. “A bit difficult to imagine.”

“It might be.” Yassen smiles, close-lipped, touching at the ring on his forefinger.

Something ugly slams into Alex’s stomach, followed by a sick sense of shame. Is this what he is now? Jealous, simply because Yassen is smiling at a precious memory?

A curdle of self-hatred ignites, Alex’s shame as kindling, John Rider's name as the catalyst. 

Before they leave Sicily, Alex discreetly palms the expensive bag of coffee beans he bought the few days before into the bag of a rich looking British tourist, too sentimental to simply throw them out but too devastated to keep them. Yassen can have anything he wants. Why would he want spur-of-the-moment coffee beans from Alex?

From then on, turmoil begins to build inside of him.

***

“Does it make it any easier,” Alex asks one day, after Yassen assassinates a rich business mogul who openly admitted to meeting his soulmate in an obscure online article that Alex found, “that soulmates can’t feel each other?”

They're staying in one of Yassen's safe houses, an almost cozy two-story cabin in the middle of nowhere, built on a bluff dangling over the biggest ravine Alex has ever seen in his life. This way, there are only two ways anyone can approach them if attempting an ambush: by air travel, which is loud and will instantly alert the two, or up the semi-steep incline the cabin is sitting on, which gives them time to evacuate or barricade themselves, Yassen had said. In the way that Alex knows Yassen is fond of his DSR-1 German-manufactured bolt-action rifle, Alex knows that Yassen is also fond of this cabin. The pipes are loud whenever either of them showers in the antiquated bathroom with water pressure that changes every day, the peeling walls do nothing to keep the chill of the elevation out, but it is well furnished, comfortable sofas pushed into an L shape, beds with smooth silk sheets, custom made tables, and a well-stocked fridge and hidden armory.

Yassen doesn’t acknowledge that Alex has even spoken.

For a moment, Alex thinks that this is one of the questions that Yassen will choose to ignore. Alex asks questions often. Yassen only ever answers when he feels like it.

“Yes,” Yassen finally replies. “I am not paid to kill two people.”

"But what if they could feel each other? And by killing someone, you've rendered their soulmate crippled, or worse?"

"That is only a what-if, Alex. It is better to focus on reality," Yassen says.

"Humor me for a second."

"I don't know," Yassen admits. "Firstly, I would charge more."

Alex almost laughs. "Why do you need more money? I bet you're already filthy rich and have millions sitting unused in offshore bank accounts in thirty countries scattered across the world."

"... I want to retire," Yassen says, quietly. He suddenly sounds very tired.

Alex sobers immediately and stares at the assassin, thoughts running wild in his head. "Why not retire now? You’re not working for Scorpia anymore and barely anyone knows you’re still alive. You have a lot of money. I have a lot of money, but I just can’t access it yet. I could learn the language from wherever you want to go, maybe get a job—"

"—Alex," Yassen interrupts, keeping his voice soft, as if he wants to let Alex down gently. Alex makes a pained noise like he’s just been wounded.

"No," Alex says. "You can't just—You _can't_ leave me. What am I going to do?"

"Spying is not the only strength that you have, little Alex," Yassen sighs. "You are still very young—" Alex flinches at that, "—and have a bright future ahead of you. Clever, quick-witted, you are so many things, Alex. You can do anything that you want to. Go back to school, make friends, be happy."

"But I _am_ happy!" Alex snaps, aware that he's growing an embarrassing shade of pink.

"You are not," Yassen disagrees, solemnly. “Not really.” Alex is _furious_. He can practically feel his blood bubbling beneath his skin, boiling with rage.

"How can you say that? How can you decide that for me?" Alex seethes. "How can you say that I'm not happy if you don't even know what happiness looks like?"

"Alex," Yassen says, cold and sharp, a rare tone that says Alex is treading on thin fucking ice.

"No," Alex shakes his head. "You don't want to see me hurt. You can't kill me. You let me stay with you, you let me eat with you, you let me sleep in the same room as you. You trust me not to double-cross you—"

"—I don't trust anyone," Yassen corrects him.

"Fuck you," Alex says. "Fuck you."

Yassen’s lips thin noticeably. “Alex.”

Alex says nothing in return. He’s ruined it. He’s ruined the pleasant amicable mood from the past few days, like he ruins everything.

“What do you want from me?” Alex asks, weary, after a long pause where neither of them speak.

“I want…” Yassen stops, catching himself from saying anything further. “I don’t want anything from you.” What was he going to say? That he wants Hunter? That he doesn't want childish, naive Alex Rider?

 _It is because I look like him?_ Alex doesn't ask. _Is that why you're keeping me with you_? He holds Yassen’s eyes for a minute, searching them for the truth. They give nothing away. They’ve never been as expressive and open as they were when he was dying on Air Force One, when he said, “I love you too, Alex.” Right now, there is none of that in his eyes. Only a clinical observation. Alex’s soulmate mark itches from under his skin, a bone-deep itch that he can’t scratch without ripping his flesh open and digging his fingers into the sensitive, bloodied wound.

“Okay,” Alex concedes because he’s too tired for any more of this. His footsteps are purposefully loud as he turns around and goes to his room, as well the sound of the door slamming shut on his way in, shaking the hinges and nearly the entire cabin along with it.

 _What a petulant child_ , Alex thinks, helplessly staring at the door frame he almost broke in a fit of pettiness.

A crack forms in the glass of their habitual lifestyles.

They try to fall back into their rhythm. They fail.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me know if you enjoyed, heheh :D
> 
> (take me out, it’s a trip, youth, wdywfm)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so... sort of fluffy?? sort of? my judgement is a bit skewed, you see...

Alex’s breath comes in wheezing pants when he wakes up slow and not all at once. There’s a brief, disoriented feeling of falling, and his body goes tense with a vague alarm.

He counts to four as he breathes in, counts to four as he breathes out, and tries to name all the sensations he can feel. He’s in a bed, but not his own because the sheets are too smooth and comfortable whereas his had been rough and scratchy on his skin for as long as he can remember. His nose is cold and numb and so is his left foot, dangling outside of his sheets. He tucks his leg back into the warmth of the covers and pulls them over his head to keep the chill off his face. 

Alex shivers.

And the haziness of his dream all comes rushing back to him at once, the heat of flames licking at his face, the fire, snapping and hissing, juxtaposed to the crisp frostiness of the cabin, Yu, about Alex’s liver, his eyes, something else, but none of it as bad as Ash, who was supposed to be Alex’s godfather and family. Ash, who betrayed John Rider for Scorpia. 

Alex’s eyes burn. He doesn’t understand. He understood even less when Ash vehemently rolled up his sleeve to reveal dark lettering, similar to the ones on Alex’s skin, except his a messy, black scrawling of _John Rider_ with disfigured scarring over it from what looked to be self-inflicted wounds. Alex had looked at Ash in horror, then.

Why is he dreaming of this now? He doesn't want to remember. He doesn’t want to think about how many people in the world might possibly have John Rider as an unrequited soulmate, about how many people who are dead might possibly have John Rider as an unrequited soulmate. He doesn’t want to think about the universe’s giant cosmic joke on the Rider family.

He exhales shakily and rubs his right eye with a freezing hand, still trembling slightly. His fingers come away wet. 

Alex knows why he dreamed of Ash. It’s his guilty conscience biting back at him for not telling Yassen where John Rider’s true loyalties lay.

Yassen wants to leave Alex. What is he supposed to do? 

… Try to go back to sleep, maybe. 

The door to his safe house room creaks open.

"Alex?" comes a soft voice.

Alex internally groans and quickly wipes away any remaining tear trails with the edges of his sleeves. Yassen is literally the last person he wants to see right now.

“Alex.” Again.

The mattress dips and the covers are gently coerced from his fingers, peeled away from his body, revealing Alex’s prone form. He wants to crawl under the bed and die. 

“What?” Alex grumbles, tugging the sheets back towards his own direction. They don’t budge under Yassen’s grip.

“You were shouting in your sleep,” Yassen says, his face blank and devoid of any tells, his eyes expressionless.

“And now I’m not,” Alex says. His voice is raspier than he would like it to be.

“Nightmare?” It’s more an observation than a question.

“It doesn’t matter,” Alex mutters, clinging to the little left of the escaping warm of the bed.

“I haven't dreamed since I was nineteen.”

Alex’s eyes slide over to meet Yassen’s. “Okay, and?”

Yassen sighs, a soft sound permeating the silence of the room. “Would you like to tell me what it was about?”

_What?_

“What?” Alex says.

“Your nightmare. Would you like to talk about it?”

“Not really,” Alex answers reluctantly.

… But Yassen is extending an olive branch to him. He might as well take it.

“It wasn’t very detailed or anything. I was—there was this time in Australia, and they wanted to harvest my organs. I basically had to escape, burn down the forest, and make my own transmitter without any outside help. But I met this man,” Alex summarizes. “He said you stabbed him.”

“I’ve stabbed many people,” Yassen informs him.

“Yeah, but you didn’t kill him. He—” Alex pauses abruptly, wincing.

Yassen waits patiently.

“He showed me his soulmate mark,” Alex explains, watching his words cautiously. “It turns out… he basically killed his soulmate. At the time, I wondered, ‘How can someone do that?’ and I guess it just stuck with me.”

“I have heard stories,” Yassen says thoughtfully, “of people who became psychologically unwell when they could not be with their soulmates.”

Alex swallows. “You mean… they went off their rockers?” 

Yassen nods.

“But—But that’s just ridiculous! Even if it hurt you, wouldn’t you want your soulmate to be happy? I know that soulmates aren’t really connected on any metaphysical level, but being able to kill your own soulmate… God, does that mean Ash killed his soulmate just because he couldn’t be with him? How could he possibly live with that?” Alex rambles, shaking his head. The assassin gives no indication of recognition with the name Alex casually drops. 

“Money, revenge, power, pleasure,” Yassen lists off on his fingers. “Very strong motivators.” 

Alex’s head snaps up to meets Yassen’s steady gaze. “Y-You—You would kill your soulmate for those things? Money, revenge, power…” Alex stammers, leaning forward.

Yassen’s expression does not betray any emotion. His face is also, for some reason, _really_ close to Alex’s.

Alex realizes that he’s accidentally traveled all the way to the other side of his bed, uncontrollably inching closer and closer to Yassen, who’s sitting on the end opposite to where Alex’s pillow is. What’s more is that Alex is on all fours, his palms pressing against the mattress below him and his knees digging into the duvet, his blanket abandoned. Alex is close enough to the assassin to see the shadows of his eyelashes fall across his cheeks delicately and the ruler-straight scar on his neck, tiny specks of grey visible in the blues of his eyes. Yassen is unfairly gorgeous, illuminated only by the full moon outside the single window in the room, tall and fair-haired. He has an air of something dangerously calm about him, a tangible sense of threat that emanates from the very depths of his being, and it is equal parts terrifying and beautiful.

“Oh, Alex,” Yassen says, amused. “Would _you_?”

“No!” Alex blurts, scrambling backwards. He didn’t mean to get that close.

“Hmm,” Yassen hums.

 _Fuck_. 

“Hypothetically, I mean,” Alex adds swiftly. “If I had a soulmate.”

“Of course,” Yassen says. “If.”

“You haven’t answered my question,” Alex says. Yassen gives him a thoughtful look.

“It depends.”

“It depends on what?” Alex hopes that the sound of his traitorous thumping heartbeat is only audible to himself, the sound of his pulse hammering in his ears and his chest and maybe even visible in his veins, too.

Alex determinedly holds his stare against Yassen’s impassivity, but the other man doesn’t falter, his blank guise belying his true thoughts, as always.

“You should go back to sleep, Alex. Four hours is not enough for you,” Yassen says, pointedly skirting around the question.

“Have you found your soulmate yet? Who is it? Do I know them?” Alex asks, tilting his head, feigning an innocent curiosity.

Yassen stands up and the mattress springs back to flatness. He bends forwards slightly and lightly brushes his knuckles over the swell of Alex’s cold cheeks. Alex knows that his mouth falls slightly open at this and that he leans into Yassen’s warm touch. Alex has not been touched gently in a very long time.

“Sleep, Alex.” The warmth leaves, and Alex briefly entertains the notion of chasing it all the way to Yassen’s mouth and tugging the assassin onto his bed, flat and pliant under him as he straddles Yassen and kisses all the breath out of him. The idea makes Alex feel weightless and dizzy. He reigns the urge under control and doesn’t act on his impulses, for once.

“Goodnight, Yassen,” Alex says, tentatively. This time, when he reaches for his blankets, the assassin lets him have them.

“Goodnight, Alex.” There is a ghost of a smile on Yassen’s face.

When Yassen finally leaves the room, Alex realizes that he’s no longer trembling like a newborn fawn left to die in a frigid winter. Instead, he is warm and drunk on the feeling of Yassen’s blue eyes on him, not as cold as they should be.

***

It’s pitch black, dark enough that Alex can’t see his fingers if he waves them a few centimeters away from his face and dark enough that he almost stumbles into four pieces of furniture before finally correcting his path of trajectory and making his way towards the kitchen, simply because all the lights are off and they’re far out enough away from the city, apparently, for there to be no light pollution. Which, again, means that it is pitch black when there are no lights on in the cabin. And there are no lights on in the cabin.

Maybe if he tries hard enough, he’ll actually be able to see in the dark.

Alex has somehow managed to awaken during Yassen’s meager four hours of sleep, a feat he has yet to accomplish until about four minutes ago. Usually, Yassen is awake at all hours that Alex is, for obvious reasons, but honestly, Alex has never tried to run away even once. Why would he? He voluntarily went with Yassen, and he hates to think of what MI6 would have done to him if he hadn’t.

Yassen is probably dozing in his own room, but the thought of the assassin actually sleeping is too much for Alex’s sleep-addled brain to process, so he just... doesn’t think about it. It stirs a feeling in him, similar to when Alex first watched Yassen eat food like a normal person. 

Alex doesn’t know why, but he didn't associate human needs such as eating or sleeping with Yassen up until that first breakfast where Alex spent fifteen embarrassing minutes, frozen and mouth agape, watching the assassin casually eat an omelet and a bowl of muesli. When Yassen had finished eating, he turned to Alex with an amused glimmer in his eyes and said, “Did you think I didn’t need to eat? I’m flattered.”

Alex promptly shut his mouth and tucked into his own breakfast, heat crawling up his cheeks at his indiscretion and wildly irrational conclusions.

Watching Yassen eat and being aware that he actually sleeps for several hours of the day still feels a bit incongruous to Alex, even now.

 _Maybe I should turn a light on_ , Alex wonders for approximately half a second… but nah. 

Nah.

He shuffles around barefoot until his fingers bump into the familiar shape of a kettle, round with a cylindrical spout and a plastic handle. He clumsily fills it with water and puts it on the stove, and now the kitchen is illuminated by a tiny glow from the pervasive flickering of a blue and orange flame.

He sighs and waits for the water to boil.

Alex will admit that it takes him a horrifying two whole minutes to realize that someone is in the kitchen with him, just barely breathing quieter than the bubbling of the boiling water in the kettle.

“Oh fuck,” slip out of Alex’s mouth, and they know it, too.

The figure in the dark leaps at him, going for his throat? His eyes? His legs? _No_ , Alex realizes, _his arms_ , but he’s too late, already flat on the ground on his stomach, both of arms twisted painfully behind him, his wrists held together and forced against his backside with one strong, unshakable hand, and a warm knee on his lower back. Alex feels the cool, round barrel of a gun against his forehead.

“Oh god, don’t shoot,” Alex says from on the floor and under Yassen.

“Alex,” Yassen says, disappointment coloring his tone. 

The timely whistle of the kettle pierces the air like a game over sound effect. Yassen loosens his hold on Alex’s arms and steps back, flipping the kitchen light on just in time to watch Alex rise to his feet, rubbing his sore wrists with a sulky huff.

“Why are you even awake?” Alex mutters, turning the stove top off.

“Someone was being very loud,” Yassen replies. Thankfully, he doesn’t look too cross at Alex essentially ruining his sleep.

A wave of guilt radiates through Alex. “Sorry. Um... do you want some tea or something?” he says awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck.

Yassen wordlessly opens a cabinet just above their heads, reaching upwards. The thin, white cotton shirt he’s wearing rides up, revealing a small sliver of skin at his hip. Alex’s mouth suddenly feels very, very dry. Yassen extends his arms even further to get to the cups. This time, his shirt hikes up even higher, exposing his entire lower stomach.

Alex’s brain stutters to a halt, and he blatantly stares at the area, wondering what it would be like to press the flat part of his tongue against it, to lick at it and taste the skin, to nip at it, to bite down and leave a blooming red-violet mark that would probably stay for weeks. And then the shirt slackens, instantly concealing the sight. 

Alex blinks groggily at this train of thought. He shifts uneasily on his feet. 

No, he’s not aroused. 

He’s _not._

Yassen flips two upside-down mugs into upright positions, grabs the kettle, and pours the water in. He places a teabag in each—seriously, where did they even come from? and where did his gun go?—and hands one to Alex, their fingers brushing together lightly as Alex takes the warm cup into his hands. He nearly drops it, but he’s disappointed Yassen enough for one night, so instead, Alex places it on the kitchen counter, not trusting his ability to keep his hands steady.

Yassen made Alex tea. That’s not sexy at all. It’s more… sweet and endearing and oddly domestic.

Alex lazily scratches his belly, a small bit of warmth lingering in his palms from the hot cup of tea, to keep his hands too occupied to wrap around Yassen’s neck and press a desperate kiss to the assassin’s gorgeous chiseled lips, and then his nose, the corner of his right eye, his forehead, and then back down to his mouth, where Alex would then suckle on Yassen’s lower lip and beg for him to do something, anything—

“Take it out in four minutes,” Yassen says, averting his eyes, and then quickly disappears back to his room with his mug faster than Alex can respond with something witty and clever.

Alex had watched Yassen prepare it the entire time. There’s no reason that the tea should taste any better than what Alex can make himself.

And yet it does. 

Alex sips at it in slow increments, wondering why Yassen was so quick to flee the scene.

***

“Did you have any siblings?” Alex asks casually, one day, curled up on the sofa, his feet dangling off the end.

Yassen, focusing very intently on his laptop, doesn’t respond and instead throws Alex a strange look, accompanied by the minute pause that always comes every time Alex asks him a more personal question.

“What?” Alex says, defensively. “I just want to know a little bit more about you, is that so wrong? You know practically every single detail of my life, but I know nothing about you.”

“That is because you don’t hide it very well,” Yassen replies lightly. “I have no siblings. I had no cousins. The only uncle I knew is dead. My mother and father died when I was about your age. Is that what you wanted to know?” Yassen doesn’t sound angry. He also wouldn’t tell any of this to Alex if he truly didn’t want to.

Alex absorbs this information like a towel, like dry and cracked soil to the first rain in months, soaking it up. 

“So, just to be clear, you currently have no living relatives? No other Gregoroviches running around?” Alex casually scratches at the scruffy fabric of the sofa with a fingernail.

“That I’m aware of, no.”

Alex’s heart skips a beat. That all but eliminates the possibility of anyone other than Yassen being his soulmate.

 _Yasha_ , he thinks. _Yasha, Yasha, Yasha_. It’s on the tip of his tongue, on the verge of spilling like the frothing bubbles in a shaken bottle of champagne. Alex wants to. Alex wants to say it, wants to moan it, wants to shout it to the heavens and scream it into the cliff side and have the ravine echo it back, wants to watch the expression unfold on Yassen’s face in realization when Alex vocalizes the name and brings it to life. He wonders how many people know of Yassen’s birth name. Not many, he guesses.

In order to hide the true nature of his questioning, Alex continues to play the part of the curious teenager. “What about… favorite foods or drinks?”

Yassen shakes his head.

“Oh, come on. Nothing? Nothing at all?” Alex’s eyes widen slightly. He doesn’t believe it. He knows it’s not true because Yassen definitely has a penchant for coffee and several other little foods that maybe he isn’t even quite aware of himself.

“I learned very early that preferences and predictability will get you killed,” Yassen explains.

“You learned that from Hunter, I’m guessing?” Alex imagines his father telling Yassen to forget everything he’s ever liked, telling him to forget any favorite childhood dishes from his mother, to forget what little memories the man has of his parents, drilling the lesson into the assassin’s head as if it were just any other task or form of training, like learning to shoot a gun. Alex grits his teeth and nearly curses out loud. Luckily for him, Yassen will just interpret any semblance of aggression as a side-effect of Alex being a growing teenager with mood swings.

“Yes, actually,” Yassen replies, simply, which makes Alex want to absolutely _t_ _hrottle_ the other man, or maybe jump out a window of the safe house, plunging to his death, thousands of meters below.

In fact, Alex’s eyes actually dart momentarily towards the closest window, very, very tempted. He breathes in, calming himself.

“Why don’t you smoke?” Alex asks. It’s a pretty random question, he realizes, right after the words finish leaving his mouth.

“Cigarettes leave a trace of a scent on clothing,” Yassen explains. “To do what I do, you must be infallible.”

“But you’re not,” Alex blurts. “Infallible, I mean.”

“No,” Yassen sighs, understanding beyond the implications of Alex’s words. “I’m not.” 

Alex lifts his eyes and finds Yassen studying him, appraising him narrowly. Alex squirms, sinking a little in his seat under Yassen’s gaze, solid and heavy and trying to convey something unspoken that Alex can’t quite understand. He wishes that Yassen would just come out and say it.

 _What do you want from me?_ Alex almost asks again.

Alex sucks in a breath instead, opting to get more information out of Yassen while he's in a good mood. “Before Scorpia, what were you doing? How did you even find out about it? It’s… kind of obscure and I doubt you could just easily stumble into it. You couldn’t have wanted to be an assassin when you were twelve, right?”

“I wanted to be a helicopter pilot when I was much younger,” Yassen confesses, and if that isn’t the _cutest_ fucking thing Alex has ever heard out of his mouth—

Yassen stares at Alex curiously. 

“What? I’m just trying to imagine a younger version of you being excited about helicopters,” Alex says, and he isn’t cooing. He definitely isn’t making soft noises at the back of his throat, thinking about a tiny Yassen who went wide-eyed at any helicopters that passed above his home, a tiny Yassen who wanted to pilot one all on his own, a tiny Yassen with the softest blond hair and the brightest blue eyes and the most dazzling little smile. Alex feels a burst of unbridled affection in his chest for the other man.

What happened then, for that boy to turn into one of the most ruthless assassins and contract killers out there?

Alex’s bubble of warmth pops. “And then what?”

“My life was a lie,” Yassen shrugs. Alex’s heart stings at the drawn parallels. “My parents were killed. I lived out on the streets for some time and was picked up by some unsavory people. I ran into Scorpia there.” Yassen gives up no other information other than the thinnest most barebone of details.

Unsavory people. If they were unsavory to even Yassen, then Alex can’t even begin to imagine what they were like. And then to be tossed straight from the pan and into the fire, into Scorpia...

Alex twitches. He fights his strengthening urge to get off the couch, cross the room, and scoop Yassen up into his arms, forcing a painfully tight hug onto the assassin. It would probably end very badly for Alex.

After a long, silent pause, Alex finally musters up the courage to ask a question that he doesn’t really want to know the answer to.

“Remember when I asked you about your soulmate? If you had one, hypothetically, and actually met them, hypothetically, what would you do?” Alex wrings his fingers together nervously, and then stops, for fear of giving himself away.

“Soulmates are a weakness in our line of work,” Yassen says automatically without skipping a beat, like he’s recited it a million times before.

“Did John teach you that as well?” Alex says, barely concealing an irritated snarl, a knee-jerk reaction.

“Alex,” Yassen says, throwing him a cursory glance. “What’s wrong?”

Alex freezes. Did Yassen know…?

“You've been very quiet recently, and you’ve switched over to calling your father by his first name,” Yassen murmurs, a hint of perplexity in his voice. “I know that learning your father was a very skilled and proficient killer couldn't have been pleasant for you.”

Alex almost sighs. So that’s what Yassen means.

“If…” Yassen hesitates, uncharacteristically. “If it makes you feel any better, your father was a kind man, from what I knew of him. There was a situation in the Amazon where I was compromised. The target appeared, and rather than leaving me to die in order to focus solely on the mission, he eliminated the target and resolved the conflict with a single bullet and gave me this.” Yassen tilts his head back slightly to reveal the scar on his neck, gently tracing it with his fingertips, the natural light of the sun just barely glancing off a ring sitting neatly on one of his fingers.

Oh god, how pathetic must he look for even _Yassen_ to feel like Alex needs comforting? Alex squeezes his eyes shut, gathers himself, and opens his them again to stare at the gorgeous hollow of Yassen’s throat. 

“And the ring?” Alex swallows, fighting down a pang of a desperate want.

“A physical reminder,” Yassen says, his face a mask of indifference. There is, however, a hint of longing in his voice. A year ago, Alex wouldn't have even been able to tell.

Alex suddenly feels very, very small, sitting on a sofa in a cabin in the middle of fuck-all nowhere, next to an extremely rich world-class assassin who has probably been to every country on the map, multiple times over, and seen lifetimes worth of deaths.

Yassen can probably have anything in the world he wants except for his soulmate. Alex has nothing at all, and his soulmate is just out of his reach. The irony of it all doesn’t escape Alex. 

What exactly is Yassen seeing when he looks at Alex?

Alex can’t help it. He laughs, dry and pained.

“I can’t read your mind, Alex,” Yassen says, something like maybe frustration seeping into his tone. Anyone else might take one look at Yassen and see a perfectly blank face. Alex, however, can see that the assassin is almost frowning.

“Nothing,” Alex lies through his teeth. Yassen’s frown deepens. “Nothing is wrong.”

“We both know that you are lying, Alex.”

“It won’t get in the way of your next job,” Alex assures him. Yassen doesn’t look very convinced.

Alex doesn’t understand. Though he’s tried, he hasn’t exactly been completely subtle with his looks and glances, and even if they pretend that the kiss didn’t happen, Yassen can’t have possibly forgotten with his near eidetic memory, which has to mean that Yassen is choosing to act this way on purpose. It makes Alex want to throw himself off a cliff again. He’s been thinking that very often, lately. It’s a tad bit unhealthy.

When had it become so bad, where Alex was no longer interested in hearing stories about his father? At the very beginning, Alex anticipated the possibility of learning more about John Rider, since Ian never talked about him. Now, all Alex wants to do when he hears the man’s name is spend three hours in a shooting range. What kind of person is he, being jealous of a dead man? Of his own _father_?

When had Alex stopped imagining John Rider as a potential caring, warm dad? As someone who would have taken care of Alex and went to his football games and hugged him whenever he’d have an off day? All of it is gone, vanished into a puff of smoke, replaced by a low simmering burn whenever John’s name is brought up.

It’s nobody’s fault but Alex’s. 

Alex has poisoned the image of John Rider all on his own.

His eyes are momentarily screwed shut to block out the sight of Yassen’s ring. It’s awful, but just for that minute, Alex hates John Rider.

Left alone, his resentment festers like an infected wound, grows like an intangible cold mist, a bitter shroud over his thoughts.

***

“You’re sulking again,” Yassen notes, in the midst of cleaning his weapons, field stripping them, followed by repetitive, hypnotizing movements as he rubs a handgun with a rag dipped in a light layer of gun oil.

“Am not,” Alex shoots back indignantly, immediately sitting up on the sofa to correct his slumped posture. “I just slept on my neck wrong.” That part isn’t a lie. Every time he shifts to look at his right, the muscles and tendons in his neck scream in protest, the pain going back and forth between something like a dull ache and maybe a knife stuck into the aforementioned area. It doesn’t feel very nice, coupled with the stressful thoughts of John Rider still plaguing his mind.

Yassen pauses, placing the rag and the handgun down on the table. He stands up and crosses the short length of the room, only to sit down beside Alex where the L of the sofas meet, reaching for Alex’s shoulders.

“What are you doing?” Alex squeaks, swatting the assassin’s persistent hands away.

“Turn around,” Yassen says. Alex pauses before reluctantly complying, grimacing when his neck twinges in pain at the movement. Yassen’s fingertips press against the tender skin experimentally until Alex winces. He wants to squirm away, to tell the assassin not to touch him, but Yassen inches several centimeters to the right and digs his knuckles into the knot at the base of Alex’s neck, and he suddenly melts back into the other man with a muffled whimper, seeing stars, reduced to a puddle on the sofa.

“Remember all the times I told you to stop slouching, Alex?” Yassen’s voice is soft, close to Alex’s ear. It’s easy to forget everything else like this, Alex, relaxed with his eyes closed and the familiar smell of their shared soap close by. He squeezes his eyes shut and tries to hold on to this fleeting intimacy forever, tries not to feel so stupidly in love with Yassen every minute of every day Alex is around him, tries to accept the fact that this is as much as he’s going to get.

And then the fingers stop, and Alex is forced to open his eyes to reality again.

“Feeling better?” Yassen asks, looking at him curiously, one hand on Alex’s shoulder and the other still on his neck.

Sometimes Alex wonders how people who become blind mid-way through their lives feel, seeing a constant ball of yellow in the sky, only for it to be taken away along with their vision.

Would it have been better not to know the sun at all?

“Loads,” Alex replies. “Loads.”

Maybe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed!!<3
> 
> (breath of life, staring, I love you, please please please let me get what I want)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heh

Alex doesn’t know what’s wrong with him. He’s a horrible person.

It happens when Yassen is showering. Alex, bored out of his mind, spots something golden and glimmery on one of the tables Yassen likes to spend hours sitting at with his laptop containing a password Alex still hasn't managed to crack. Upon closer inspection, the something turns out to be Yassen’s ring, the one he wears at all hours of the day, except when he’s showering, apparently. A sharp stab of a dormant jealousy claws at Alex’s insides. 

He remembers Yassen talking about this ring, once before, about how it was one of the few physical reminders he had left of John Rider, other than the ruler-straight scar on his neck from a situation in the Amazon. Alex has seen Yassen touching the ring in moments where he lets his guard down around Alex, moments of quiet contemplation, which, Alex thinks, are moments where Yassen indulges in his memories of John, smiling almost sadly with a reverent expression of nostalgia.

Yassen smiles more about a dead man than for anything or anyone still in this Earth, Alex included. The stab of jealousy deepens as a sudden wave of anger overtakes him.

It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair that John abandoned Yassen to be with Alex’s mother, yet sixteen years later, his hold on Yassen is just as strong. It isn’t fair that John had what Alex wants, but didn’t take it. It isn’t fair that John Rider _still_ has what Alex wants so desperately.

 _It isn’t fucking fair_ , Alex thinks furiously, snatching the ring off the table and marching up to one of the closed windows, wrenching it open with one quick pull. A cold chill immediately enters the room, brushing past Alex’s burning hot cheeks, flushed with anger.

He has the ring clenched tightly in his fingers, his right arm raised in the air by his head, poised to throw as hard as he can. They’re on a cliff head. The window is in the direction of the ravine. The ring will be unretrievable and lost forever.

Alex falters. His arm lowers.

What is he _doing_?

His behavior is extremely childish. For all he complains about how Yassen likes John more in his head, it makes _sense_. All Alex had was John’s looks, and with each passing growth spurt, even that is slowly disappearing as he grows more and more into the image of his mother. He doesn’t have John Rider’s patience, skill, or tactical or weapons prowess, his levelheadedness, charm, or maturity. Alex is still a boy in man’s world in Yassen’s eyes, and maybe he really is, no matter how much Alex tries to convince himself otherwise.

Maybe the time has come for him to finally change something about it.

The bustling water pipes abruptly come to a stop.

Alex freezes for a moment before scrambling to put the ring back exactly where he took it from, facing the correct direction and everything.

By the time Yassen returns to the living room, fully dressed—no, Alex is _not_ disappointed—with a bath towel in hand, Alex is also back to his spot previous to Yassen’s shower, idly picking at the old, peeling paint of the walls near the sofa.

“You opened the window,” Yassen notes. 

Fuck. He forgot to close it.

“It was getting stuffy,” Alex says. They both know what he said is a lie because it’s six degrees Celsius where they are. It never snows, but it’s always cold enough to threaten the possibility.

Thankfully, Yassen drops the subject, turning his head away.

“Next week, something easy. Close by. Minimum security,” Yassen says, instead. Over the past month, he’s been accepting more and more jobs ranging in difficulty and severity. Yassen asks for Alex to accompany him on very few of them, simply because they are long and exhaustive and not something Alex has the stamina or experience to endure. Alex misses Yassen when he’s gone with a heavy heart, a longing ache, somewhat aware of the possibility that one day, Yassen might fail to return despite all his strength and experience. Alex tries not to dwell too much on this particular line of thinking.

Alex also suspects that Yassen has been getting less than his usual four hours of sleep recently. Something easy and nearby sounds like a nice break for the both of them.

Alex nods, keeping his gaze on the open window. Yassen picks up the ring and slides it back onto his finger, but not without tilting his head inquisitively in Alex’s direction. 

Alex doesn’t acknowledge the gesture, too busy wondering when his soul became so cold and frozen.

***

Dusk descends over the cabin before Yassen can return from a supply run. They’ve been staying at the cabin long enough for their food and ammunition to come close to running out, and though Alex offered to go along to lend a helping hand, Yassen shot Alex a look that effectively silenced him.

Alex makes himself a shoddy steaming cup of tea before going and sitting on a patch of ground outside the cabin. He has just become accustomed to the horrible constant whistling of the wind through the ravine on the cliff side, a peripheral white noise that rendered him sleepless on the very first day. Yassen took one look at his overall drooped demeanor and offered to switch rooms with him. The position of his room muffled the worst of the howling, Yassen explained. Alex’s usually stayed empty. Yassen wasn't in the habit of having guests over. That very night, Alex laid in Yassen’s bed—Alex’s new one—overcome with more affection than he knew what to do with. He slept well and dreamt of accented murmurs soothing him to sleep in place of the lonely shrieks of the ravine and was sure to thank the assassin the following morning. Two days after that, he christened the bed while it still smelled like Yassen.

Alex sips at his warm mug, slowly but surely draining it of its liquid contents.

Alex may not know where he is, but at least he knows that the sunsets never disappoint, hints of hazy pinks and creamsicle oranges and pastel purples blended together on a wet canvas, just barely tinting the soft, wispy edges of slow-moving clouds, migrating in unison towards no particular destination, and behind it all, the pervasive glow of the sun, dipping lower with each passing minute, very much determined to run itself into the ground, similar to the way a certain assassin has been acting this past month.

Alex stares as the sun begins to melt into the Earth. The softened brightness almost hurts his eyes. He briefly wonders how it would taste. He licks his lips. Maybe like something hot that will melt in his mouth. Maybe it will melt him, too, as it slips down his throat and drops into his stomach, leaving a trail of molten fire in its wake, burning his mouth and his esophagus. Maybe it will eat through his chest and his stomach and if he's lucky, it will reach the deepest confines inside of him and dissolve his soul.

He blinks dazedly and lifts his cup up to the sky, positioning it right below the sun. 

The sun dips, kissing the horizon, painting the valley a deep pink. It sinks snugly into his cup, so easily captured.

Alex clenches his eyes shut all the way and drinks from the sun.

It tastes almost spicy, Alex thinks, like the scent on the assassin after he’s gone for a run in the morning at the crack of dawn and returns to the cabin, slightly musky but barely breaking a sweat. It tastes like the bitter sweetness of coffee on Yassen’s lips when Alex kissed him that day in the park like a fool. It tastes like when Yassen considerately makes Alex a cup of tea instead of amusedly watching him fumble around with the expensive tea bags. It’s not fair that Yassen can make a better cup of tea than Alex can. Yassen doesn’t even _like_ drinking tea. It also tastes cold, like a mouthful of hand-shaved ice. If Alex concentrates hard enough, he can even taste the barest hints of something coppery and metallic, reminiscent of Air Force One. 

The sun rises and sets every day, like clockwork. After long enough, you may even begin to take it for granted.

The barest of brightness through his closed eyelids darkens abruptly. There is someone standing in front of him.

“Alex?”

Alex sighs. The sun would probably taste remarkable if he ever got the chance to put it in his mouth.

“How long have you been sitting out here?”

Maybe he should just accept the inevitable that everyone, his soulmate included, is going to eventually leave him. 

“Alex.” A little more forceful.

Alex isn’t angry or upset. It’s a rather peaceful conclusion.

His cup, cold and long empty, is pried from his fingers. 

When Alex finally opens his eyes, the world has gone completely dark, and Yassen is there, in place of the sun. Alex smiles at him.

***

The next morning, the sun rises like normal, visible through the lone window in his room. Alex nearly cries. 

Of course he can’t keep it for himself.

Icarus died in his hubris, longing for the sun. Maybe Alex will fall into the sea and drown as well.

***

It’s been building like a crescendo. Alex should have seen this coming, really.

Almost every waking moment since the sunset, Alex wonders about what he can do to change himself.

It’s a fairly simple conclusion in the end.

What Yassen wants is John Rider, Hunter, skilled top Scorpia assassin.

Alex is only a piece of John Rider, a leftover thread to the dead man. Alex attended Malagosto. He was a good student. He just didn’t have it in him to kill directly, in the end, but he remembers their instructions. He remembers that he was _good_. He remembers how to do everything. He just needs to have a chance to bring it into practice, is all.

Usually, when MI6 tells Alex that his assignment will be quick and easy, they are lying or leaving out details or truly being clumsy when scoping out intel. It’s a wonder that he’s survived for so long. 

When Yassen says that it will be quick and easy, he isn’t lying.

They take a plain white rental Nissan Maxima and drive an hour and a half to the east. Alex fiddles silently in the passenger seat for the entire duration of the ride, mindlessly watching the view change every half a second. Yassen glances over at him multiple times in concern. 

Or at least, as concerned as Yassen can look.

His concern is misplaced. Alex is feeling fine. Alex is feeling better than fine.

They are nearer to civilization than Alex could have guessed, whatever city they’ve arrived in bustling with people travelling to and fro, commuting, shopping, touring. He doesn’t manage to catch any street signs, though, before Yassen pulls into an underground car park below a ten-story building.

Quick and easy. They take the staircases and avoid the lift. Alex vaguely thinks back to when he was sent to Point Blanc because of a rich, important man who died in a lift. He wonders how many more people have died because he stopped working for MI6.

Alex doesn’t think on it for very long. They reach the eighth floor. It is nearly empty. Yassen waves to the receptionist like he knows her from working here. He doesn’t.

They cross the office and enter room 808. 

Yassen, who can afford the best military-grade weapons that money can buy, is equipped with a handgun and the quietest silencer on the market. 

The target doesn’t even lift his head.

If Alex weren’t looking, all he would hear is two snaps and their points of impact.

Quick and easy.

They return the way they came, down the stairs. Before they reach the car park, there is a uniformed man, a security guard. Alex thinks he hears his name being said.

Yassen lifts his gun, takes precise aim at the man’s neck, and shoots.

Two things happen.

Firstly, Yassen’s gun jams and his eerily stony expression slips into one of the most minuscule flickers of shock. His gun _never_ jams. Hysterically, Alex wonders for a moment if his particularly unlucky brand of Rider luck has latched itself onto the assassin.

Secondly, the security guard reveals his own handgun in retaliation and points it at Yassen, his finger already on the trigger. French expletives that don’t warrant repeating spill out of his mouth.

Well, at least Alex knows where he is, now. 

France. How fitting.

The world slows to a stop, with Yassen and the security guard’s guns pointed at each other. It’s almost funny how Alex hears the words of a woman he’s only met once when he was much younger in his head, of the happy-go-lucky soulmate specialist from primary school.

She was right. Alex’s soulmate _does_ give him butterflies. Half of the time around the other man, Alex has to concentrate entirely on keeping his own face as vacant as Yassen’s, otherwise, he would constantly be grinning like an idiot, his stomach full of a fluttery contentment at just being able to be around the assassin, having the privilege of watching the fleeting annoyance on Yassen’s face when he finds Alex’s unwashed dishes in the sink or his exasperated concession whenever Alex manages to steal his attention away from whatever he’s doing on that annoyingly uncrackable laptop. Some nights, the air grows thick with a fragile tenderness, and Alex doesn’t talk for fear of disrupting it. The butterflies are as unrelenting as his affection for Yassen.

The butterflies have had enough. They want to burst from his chest and leave. Alex knows that their thin, papery wings will burn up and crumple in the sun. Alex can’t let that happen.

Alex briefly entertains the thought of jumping in front of Yassen and heroically taking a bullet for him, but honestly, he isn’t too keen on the thought of getting shot again and is even less keen on the thought of dying. Maybe in Uruguay, he would have been okay with it, but Alex is no longer the same person that he was then. If he dies, he’ll eventually grow hazy in Yassen’s memories the way Ian has in his own, ultimately eclipsed by John Rider. If John, in death, overshadows Alex, in life, then how can Alex even begin to compete with John if he dies?

Above all, the security guard’s gun is aimed at Yassen. Alex can’t watch him bleed out again. He _can’t_.

The soulmate specialist was right about one other thing. Alex’s soulmate gives him the strength to do things he never would have been able to do before.

The gun Yassen gave him that he never intended to use is suddenly in Alex’s hands with the safety off.

Quick and easy.

The security guard is fast. 

Alex is faster.

Alex has never felt more numb in his life than when he wills his finger to pull the trigger.

***

Icarus died in his hubris, longing for the sun. It is a cautionary child’s tale, meant to teach restraint and humility. Yassen thinks of it hand in hand with his memories of Hunter and that fateful day on Albert Bridge. 

Except, recently, he thinks of it whenever Alex smiles at him, bright and warm, and he feels a swell of a telltale undeserving. Stuck in between a boy and a man, Alex has been through what no child should ever have to. Yassen will admit that killing Ian Rider has probably sent Alex down this path earlier than Ian wanted, but it is also evident that Alex has been unknowingly trained from a young age to be a spy. It is visible in the way he moves and reacts, the way his entire body lights up in alertness at the sign of any possible danger. 

Yes, Alex Rider was trained to be a spy.

However, he has many attributes that make him very uniquely Alex. As per the words of a dead Uruguayan weapons dealer, Alex Rider has quite the mouth on him, a snarky comment prepared in the worst of situations. It is a very clever way for Alex to rile his enemies up and goad them into making a mistake. Yassen has been on the end of it many times, yet he still finds it very difficult not to react to Alex’s numerous brazen remarks as well as his dauntless vocal poking and prodding.

Through MI6 and Scorpia, Alex has managed to keep himself intact, and this is certainly an impressive feat. Alex protests a majority of the times he accompanies Yassen until it is clearly explained to him the type of targets that Yassen prefers going after. 

Yassen leaves out the part about how he is choosing job after job with Alex’s moralities in mind.

Alex Rider, bruised and battered but never broken.

In addendum, Alex’s face has always been mobile, the slightest hint of displeasure or contentment easily detectable. He wears his heart on his sleeve. It is a terrible quality that will get Alex killed. Yassen finds that he likes it more than he would ever be willing to admit out loud.

Today, Yassen cannot glimpse a single thing from Alex. It is worrying.

It turns out that it is indeed a cause for concern.

The job is a quick and easy one, in and out. Yassen does not expect any trouble, but trouble arrives, anyway.

“Alex,” Yassen warns about the armed lone man guarding the final emergency exit and raises his gun to get rid of the problem. His gun jams. He swiftly follows the direction of the security guard’s aim. It is on Yassen and not on Alex. 

That is fine. Yassen can work with that. He has worked with less.

He shifts on his feet and prepares to catch a graze in his arm in order to lunge at the security guard and knock him unconscious, but he glimpses movement out of his peripheral vision from Alex, who has the sidearm that Yassen gave him months ago held steadily in his hands.

 _No_ , Yassen wants to say. _Don’t._

Alex proceeds to shoot the security guard three times with all the precision of a professional. Three loud sequential cracks, one after the other.

It is almost as cold as his hometown in Estrov, Yassen notes, even though they are in a warmer part of France.

Alex’s skin is visibly chilled, the paleness a contrast to his dark brown eyes, but the cold air has also rendered his nose a bright pink and his mouth an alluring shade of raspberry red. Yassen wants to lean forwards and kiss it, but now is not the time. Alex has just killed a man.

Alex turns to Yassen, doe-eyed with a sunless smile and an unruffled tranquility. “So… do we just leave the body here? I kind of haven’t done this before.”

Yassen’s heart drops to his stomach with an uncomfortable lurch. He isn’t one to be surprised easily, but he genuinely expected more of a reaction out of Alex. 

It is a good kill. An efficient one. A voice that sounds suspiciously like Hunter tells Yassen that Alex has both great control and potential. All he needs to do is hone in on it, and Alex could quite possibly make a better assassin than them both.

Yassen blatantly ignores it like he does every time Hunter has a helpful suggestion regarding Alex. He checks the security guard for confirmation of death before finally meeting Alex’s unflinching gaze again.

Shouldn’t Alex be more distraught instead of searching Yassen’s eyes for approval? Shouldn’t he be more upset?

It almost feels like the sky is falling apart.

Yassen is worried. Something is wrong with his Alex.

***

He’s done it. He’s finally _done it._

The floating euphoria lasts for approximately two seconds before the reality of the situation crashes down on Alex’s head and he watches in crisp HD as a cooling corpse hits the floor accompanied by the echo of three loud cracks reverberating off the walls around them.

It should feel liberating, he thinks. It should feel like he’s been released of a weight he’s been carrying for months. Maybe it should even feel a little bit good.

It feels like none of those things. 

It’s anticlimactic. The security guard dies without screaming or begging for his life. Alex’s hands don’t tremble. He lowers the gun a fraction.

His eyes dart over to Yassen’s to gauge the assassin’s reaction. Alex doesn’t expect the flicker of puzzlement that escapes Yassen’s normal stoic mask of self-control.

Yassen is probably expecting some sort of an emotional outburst from him, but Alex won’t give him the satisfaction.

Alex is unfazed. 

Alex is fine.

“So… do we just leave the body here?” Alex jokes, swallowing down the emotions lodged in his throat. “I kind of haven’t done this before.”

Yassen prods the dead body with his shoe and then looks up to connect with Alex’s stare.

Yassen doesn’t look pleased _at all_.

Alex feels painfully young and inexperienced. 

What… What did he do wrong?

“I guess I was quicker on the draw,” Alex says. This wasn’t enough to get Yassen to stop thinking of him as a boy. As John Rider’s son. Maybe nothing ever will.

“We need to leave.” Yassen’s voice is crisp and businesslike, plucking the sidearm from Alex's hands. “Your gun has no silencer.”

They step around the dead body, careful to avoid the pooling puddle of blood, and slide into the rental like nothing is wrong. There is no traffic. The next hour passes in a blur of self-loathing. Alex doesn’t even register that for a majority of that time, he’s rubbing at the soulmate mark above his right knee, falling back into an old habit that he should have all but kicked by now.

After they park a little bit aways from the cabin, Alex all but stumbles back into the safe house behind Yassen. Everything smells stale and wrong.

Alex thinks he needs to lie down. Or pass out. He’s not sure which one.

“This warrants celebration, don’t you think?” Alex declares, heading for the kitchen, even though it really doesn’t. He just wants his mind to be numbed with the alcohol he knows Yassen keeps nearly hidden behind the fridge. This is a good excuse, he thinks. 

He’s stopped in his tracks by fingers enclosed tightly around his wrist before he can get very far. Alex turns around to face the assassin in annoyance.

“Why did you do that?” Yassen’s face is unreadable but his eyes are sharp.

“I mean, I thought it was rather obvious why,” Alex says nonchalantly, forcing a casual tone. “He had a gun and yours wasn’t working, so naturally I did what I had to do.” 

“Three bullets,” Yassen says. “All to kill. None to disable. Why did you do that? The truth, Alex.”

Alex splutters. “That _was_ the truth. You would have done the exact same thing!” 

He tugs to test the strength of Yassen’s hold on him.

“Maybe I would have done the same thing, but you and I are very different people, Alex. John Rider didn’t w—” 

But Alex doesn’t hear the rest of what Yassen says. He snatches his wrist back with a violent jerking motion. The assassin’s words morph into an indecipherable crackling static as Alex feels an instant rush of dizziness to his head, a sudden audible pounding of blood in his ears, his pulse hot and racing in anger, and the sudden awareness that Alex’s feet have started moving without his permission, moving and taking him away from Yassen, away from the assassin’s words, towards the exit of the cabin and anywhere far, far away from here and any mentions of John Rider.

“Alex,” Yassen says. His voice is quiet, but volume has never really equalled intensity for the assassin.

Alex has been going about this the wrong way. 

“Alex, come back.”

The obvious solution is that before Yassen can leave Alex, Alex needs to leave him first in order to regain any semblance of control over the situation. He’s nearly out the door. He remembers where the car is, and once he drives into the city, he can book a one-way flight back to England. If that doesn’t work… maybe he’ll phone MI6 and beg them to take him back. Beg for them to exploit him again.

“Alex, _please_.”

And that’s what stops Alex in his tracks. Yassen Gregorovich doesn’t say please to _anybody_. He doesn’t beg. He just doesn’t.

Alex turns around, barely able to meet Yassen’s gaze.

“I can’t do this anymore,” Alex confesses. At Yassen’s noise of confusion, Alex quickly corrects himself, “Not the jobs, but… traveling with you.”

“Traveling… with me,” Yassen echoes. If Alex didn’t know any better, he would think that Yassen sounds a bit hurt, but that can’t possibly be right.

Alex nods in confirmation.

“Today, when you shot that man…” Yassen trails off. “You didn’t hesitate.”

“Yeah, and? I’m getting better at this is all,” Alex says defensively.

“No.” Yassen shakes his head, a flash of worry flickering across his features. “I saw you, your eyes… they held no remorse.”

“Like I said, I’m getting better at this,” Alex pointedly repeats himself.

“So this does have something to do with John Rider,” Yassen says bluntly. He’s hit the nail right on the head with a scary accuracy. 

… Maybe walking away right after Yassen said John’s name wasn’t the smartest thing Alex has done.

“That’s not—” Alex snaps, but exhales in frustration and calms himself in a surprising show of control. “That’s not what this is about.”

“Today, you took the life of a person you have never met, who meant nothing to you, and you seem to have no regret. There will be no going back. Do you understand what you’ve done? Do you understand what that makes you?” Yassen warns. 

_It makes me a killer, a killer, a killer._ Alex feels an onslaught of grief. He didn’t even know the name of the man he killed, the security guard who was only doing his job. Alex didn’t have to kill that man. He didn’t. But if it meant Yassen would finally look at him and see Alex as more than just the child of his soulmate, if Alex could just live up to that shadow a bit little more...

“What if I liked it?” says Alex, dangerously, suppressing his sudden disgust at himself. “What if I thought it felt good pulling the trigger?”

“... Did you?” Yassen asks, shaking his head disbelievingly. “No, you didn’t like it.”

Alex holds the assassin’s stare defiantly. 

“Tell me you didn’t like it,” Yassen demands. Both his hands are suddenly on Alex’s shoulders. “Tell me.”

Alex blinks. There’s something in Yassen’s voice, something strangely vulnerable.

“I liked it,” Alex lies. His pulse is elevated, his breath quickened, both signs of dishonesty.

“No,” Yassen disagrees, his mask of cold indifference slipping. “You didn’t. You can’t.”

“It felt good.” Even to himself, it sounds hollow. Fake.

“Alex,” Yassen says, lined with a desperation that sounds wildly out of place. “ _Alex_.”

“I—” Alex’s voice cracks. “I—I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“I’m beginning to influence you too much, then,” Yassen concludes, his voice empty. “I’ve… compromised you. This is why you can’t stay with me.”

“Stop it!” Alex cries. Distantly, he can feel himself dropping to his knees in exhaustion with a faint thud. “Don’t say that. Don’t—”

The floodgates burst wide open.

“Stop saying that,” Alex chokes. It comes out strangled. “Don’t tell me to leave you.”

Yassen looks lost.

“I hated it. I hated pulling the trigger, okay? That man probably had a family and a soulmate and kids and—and I’m too weak to ignore how much it hurts, Yassen.” Alex dimly registers something wet trailing down his face. He hastily wipes the tears from his cheeks with the heels of his palms.

Yassen quickly casts a professorial eye over him, slowly dropping to his knees as well to keep at an eye level with Alex. “Were you injured?

Alex laughs, ugly and agonized. “It hurts. It hurts so much.”

“Where, Alex?”

When Alex doesn’t answer immediately, Yassen hesitantly lifts his hands and prepares to pat him down for any wounds, but Alex clumsily snatches one of them and places it directly over where his own heart is.

“Here,” Alex says. “It hurts here.”

Yassen freezes. His hand begins to recede in realization, but Alex clutches it to his chest tighter.

“Hurts,” Alex slurs, feeling a familiar burning sting behind his eyes and a tightness at the back of his throat, one that he reserves for when he’s completely and utterly alone in his bedroom, preferably under blankets and hidden from eyes and the rest of the world.

“Oh _, Alex_.” 

Alex bursts into uncontrollable tears with a ragged sob, his vision growing blurry. His hands are too occupied with holding onto Yassen’s hand and preventing the assassin from shifting away again to wipe at the sudden stream of tears freely flowing down his cheeks and messily dripping off his face. Alex tucks his head down towards his chest in some heavy-handed failure of an attempt to hide his face, ugly and red and splotchy, from Yassen. Alex can hear his own sounds, like a distressed child, raw and tender, salty drops rolling off his trembling chin and onto his thin trousers. He vaguely notices a gentle hand curling around his shoulders and to the back of his head, settling there before gently pushing Alex’s face down against a firm chest, radiating warmth. Alex wheezes in surprise. The hand strokes his hair lightly in a comforting up and down motion, warm and reassuring as Alex tries to wrestle his uneven hiccups and sobs into something more quiet and subdued. 

Several minutes pass like this, Yassen holding Alex against his chest and Alex nestled under his chin, blindly clinging to his warmth.

Alex can feel Yassen’s even breath on his forehead, pressed close in a way that Alex thought he would never get to experience.

When’s the last time someone’s held Alex as he cried? 

_Never_ , he thinks, absentmindedly. _Never_.

“I’ve been doing this longer than you’ve been alive,” Yassen murmurs against Alex’s temple. “I don’t enjoy it. I have never enjoyed it. I don’t want you to enjoy it either, Alex.”

Alex exhales shakily. 

That would have been nice to know a few hours ago. Now an innocent man is dead because of Alex’s incompetent decision making.

Alex leans backwards, away from Yassen’s chest, and inhales deeply, meeting Yassen’s gaze. Clear eyes float on bottomless ones.

Alex has been unmoored, cheeks sticky with tears. He’s sure that he looks like a mess if the damp spots on the collar of Yassen’s jacket are anything to go by.

“Sorry for ruining your jacket,” Alex apologizes, clearing his throat. He can feel the embarrassment beginning to climb up his neck and pool in his face, bright scarlet. He feels utterly exhausted and empty… but in a good way.

He’s still holding onto one of Yassen's hands. Alex stares at it, calloused and manicured and very dangerous. Yassen’s other hand moves down to Alex’s cheek and stays there, essentially trapping Alex from looking away.

“Now tell me, what was all this about?”

Alex clears his throat again, taking in a deep breath, sniffling. Yassen tenderly brushes his thumb across one of Alex’s tear-stained cheeks, rubbing the wet trails away with a soothing caress.

“You’re my soulmate,” Alex says slowly, his voice still raspy from crying.

A pause.

Yassen blinks at him. “Let me see.”

“What?” Alex says, eloquently.

“Let me see,” Yassen repeats, patiently. “Your mark. My name.”

Alex swallows. “Well you see, it’s...uh, on my leg.”

Yassen pats Alex’s cheek twice in what might be a fond gesture and then suddenly both his hands are pulling on the waistband of Alex’s trousers, tugging them down Alex’s hips. It takes a bit of grabbing and maneuvering Alex’s legs on Yassen’s part, but he eventually gets them below the bend of Alex’s knees. Alex, sitting there too dazed to help or protest, watches as Yassen yanks his trousers all the way down and off his legs.

“Bandages?” Yassen raises an eyebrow at him.

“Just in case anyone ever saw,” Alex explains, no longer attempting to fight the heated blush that has spread across the entirety of his face.

“And by anyone, you mean me,” Yassen notes. Alex nods dumbly trying to ignore the fact that he’s been reduced down to his boxers.

Yassen’s fingers find the edges of the bandages, playing with the frayed ends.

“Should I go fetch a pair of scissors or something?” Alex asks, wanting to do something more than just sit on the floor uselessly.

“No need,” Yassen replies, and then slides a thin knife out of his military-style tactical boots.

“Oh,” Alex says as Yassen slips the knife between Alex’s right leg and the wrapping, the steel of the blade cold against his bare skin, beginning to cut through with ease. 

Alex thinks about how easily Yassen could take that knife and turn it downwards, stabbing him right in the femoral artery, thinks about the consequential budding pain, radiating from his leg outward to his spine and all the way to his fingertips, leaving Alex to helplessly bleed out on the floor, unable to walk, without a phone and too far from civilization to call for help. He thinks about how he has no one now but Yassen, and maybe if it was what Yassen truly wanted, Alex would even let him. 

Alex whimpers, twitching at probably the most inopportune moment.

The knife slips one centimeter down. 

“Alex,” Yassen says, faintly alarmed. Well, it appears that Yassen sharpens all his knives regularly.

“Oops,” Alex says, voice a little breathless, staring at the blood beginning to bead on his thigh. “Good thing we’ve got bandages.”

Yassen finally slices through the last of the wrapping and half-heartedly dabs at the small cut before shoving the bandages out of the way to reveal a crisp, black inscription.

Yassen opens his mouth, then snaps it close again. He stares at the mark reverently, along with a mixture of amazement and befuddlement, like he can't quite believe what he’s seeing.

Alex’s face heats up at Yassen’s speechlessness. It’s... certainly a rare sight. 

Alex furtively studies the way Yassen’s eyes intently follow the lettering like a man starved of sunlight, locked in a pitch dark basement for weeks on end and deprived of it, shocked at the brightness of a sun he forgot existed after clawing his way out and escaping. The reaction almost makes up for every single time Alex’s heart has felt like it was being torn in two and shattered into a million sharp pieces with a heavy sledgehammer these past few months. Alex wants to take this moment and inject it straight into his bloodstream, wants to keep it locked in a box and throw away the key so he’s the only one who’ll ever see Yassen like this. 

Except. Maybe he’s not the only person, a voice at the back of his mind says. It adds an upsetting splash of sobriety into the moment.

Yassen swallows. Alex follows the bob of his Adam’s apple.

“And you’ve had this since…?” Yassen trails off.

“Air Force One,” Alex supplies helpfully, his voice still a bit scratchy. “After you were shot, you grabbed my wrists. I woke up and… I thought you died.”

Alex stares at the mark. What a thing of bullshit.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Yassen says.

“About what?”

“Everything,” Yassen says. “Everything.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Alex scowls. He reaches for his discarded trousers, thrown carelessly to the side, but Yassen grabs his wrist and holds it still for the second time that night.

Yassen looks apologetic, but at the same time, not really. “I’m afraid you can no longer return to England. Or MI6. Or a normal life.”

“What?” Alex’s gaze immediately shifts from his mark to Yassen. “I don’t get it. What are you trying to say?”

“My name is on you. You’re mine,” Yassen says simply. “You have your wish. I won’t ask you to leave anymore.”

“You won’t ask me to leave anymore?” Alex repeats unintelligently, _You’re mine_ bouncing off the curved walls in his head. 

“I won’t allow you leave even if you wanted to,” Yassen amends. “I’m sorry.”

Something in Alex’s head snaps like a brittle rubber band. He thinks it’s his sanity.

This... isn’t real. It can’t be.

“You can’t just change your mind like that,” Alex says with his own self-sabotage fully in mind. “Like you said, you’re bad for me. And I’m bad for you. I’m a weakness. I’ll get you killed. I _already_ almost got you killed.”

“It was my choice,” Yassen replies firmly. “And if you are a weakness, then even better. I can keep you close.”

Alex is going to regret it. He’s going to regret it so much, but Yassen deserves to know. 

“Hunter was a secret double agent for MI6,” Alex blurts in a last-ditch attempt. “So whatever honor-bound thing you have going on? It’s misplaced. He was never really on your side—er, I mean on Scorpia’s side. You don’t owe him anything.”

“I know.”

“That day, on Albert Bridge, he didn’t actually—what did you say?” Alex pauses, interrupting himself, head snapping up to look at the assassin.

“I know,” Yassen says softly. “No amount of planning can defeat coincidence. I found something that divulged of Hunter’s true allegiances.”

“You knew that he was MI6? I don’t understand,” Alex whispers, shaking his head. “Why did you tell me to come with you if you knew he betrayed you?

“He didn’t betray me in the personal sense,” Yassen sighs. “I see that, now. But I will always look up to him.” _In a way, I loved him_ , Alex hears.

Alex sniffles. “But you said it before: soulmates are a weakness in your line of work.”

“Then it’s a good thing I’m retired,” Yassen says, the corners of his mouth faintly twitching upwards.

“You—What? Wait, _what_?” Alex blinks in confusion. “But we—just today—”

“I had planned for today to be the final one.”

Alex is stunned into silence.

Yassen rubs the mark on Alex’s skin with his thumb, staring at it with an undisguised fascination. Alex shivers.

“I have nothing to offer you,” Alex says miserably. “I’ve got nothing. I’m just... Alex.”

Yassen doesn’t relent. “Just Alex is enough.”

“Are you sure?” Alex asks, his voice uncontrollably small.

“You’re so much more than your father.” Yassen looks directly at Alex while speaking, voice stern, picking at the heart of the issue.

Alex’s heart stutters. He masks his pathetic longing with a nonchalant quip. “He actually sounds like a bit of a right bastard to me.”

“You are likable and very clever. You wear your heart on your sleeve, but it never deters you. You are kind and honest,” Yassen continues to say. “Hunter never divulged the full truth about anything.”

“Can you—Can we just—?” Alex stammers, flustered. “Stop talking about him?”

“As you wish.” And by _god_ does Alex wish that he hadn’t watched so much of the Princess Bride.

Alex makes an appreciative noise.

“But this reaction you have whenever I bring Hunter up…” Yassen says, tilting his head inquisitively. 

“No thanks,” Alex says. “Conversation over.” He wiggles his hand out of Yassen’s grip and stands up, rising to his feet in one swift movement, nearly tipping over clumsily before regaining strength in his legs, following a direct beeline to his bedroom as fast as he can without running,

Alex feels the foot behind his legs before he sees it, but he locks his knees in place, not to be fooled again, and automatically turns to elbow his attacker in the neck. Yassen catches his jab and pinches him in the stomach, _hard_.

“Ow,” Alex hisses, swatting Yassen’s hand away.

“We can talk in your room, then?” Yassen suggests. It’s not really a suggestion.

Alex turns so that his back is facing the closed door of his bedroom. He’s still in his boxers, one piece of armor too little to deal with this.

“How about we call it a night?” Alex counters. “You look tired. Completely exhausted. You should probably go to sleep.”

“I don’t feel very tired,” Yassen says.

“Yes, you do,” Alex says, rubbing at where the assassin pinched him. “Very sleepy. I’m very sleepy as well. Good night.”

“Alex,” Yassen says. “Whatever it is, you killed a man because of it.”

Any further protest dies immediately in Alex’s throat. He sees a cold corpse decaying on the floor in a puddle of its own blood, still not found by anyone yet, the smell of death beginning to waft from what used to be a man. He shudders.

Yassen casts Alex a long-suffering look, leaner closer still into his space.

“Isn’t it obvious? I’m—It’s—” _childish_. Alex breaks off the sentence, looking up at the ceiling like it might provide him with some answers. All he sees is his own long, dark shadow, cast by the setting sun. 

Yassen cups Alex’s cheeks, tilting his head downwards, bringing him back to Earth and forcing him to make eye contact with the assassin.

“It’s because I feel jealous,” Alex says, quickly and all at once, before he loses his nerve. Admitting it feels like pulling teeth.

“Jealous?” Yassen actually looks surprised. “Of what?”

“Are you serious?” Alex grits out. “Are you pulling my leg? Do you really want me to say it that badly?” 

Something in Yassen’s eyes shifts in realization. Both of them are motionless for the next few seconds.

Yassen studies Alex for a moment before coming to a decision, effortlessly shrugging his jacket off, allowing it to drop to the floor despite its expensive material.

“What are you doing?” Alex says warily, leaning as close to his bedroom door as possible, still prepared to retreat like a coward. Yassen wordlessly grabs the hem of his own t-shirt and lifts it up, up past his neck, over his head, and off, revealing a wide expanse of pale skin underneath,

Alex’s eyes nearly bulge out of his skull at the sudden display of skin, but more importantly, he instantly narrows in on a dark patch of skin marred by a crescent-shaped bullet scar. To the immediate right of the scar in nearly tiny invisible writing, almost smaller and thinner than several locks of hair, inky jet-black as the one permanently etched onto Alex’s right leg.

_Rider_

Alex's jaw hits the floor. His eyes re-examine the bullet scar, this time finding distorted black specks on the warped skin, like a word or name there has been scratched out by the reforming of skin and scar tissue.

“Who—What was the first name?” Alex asks, automatically bringing a hand up to the mark and lightly tracing the surname with a finger.

“It doesn’t matter,” Yassen says, knowing damn well that it does.

If Alex stares hard enough, maybe he can make out four letters destroyed by the bullet and manifest it back into existence. 

Alex?

... John?

Alex drops his hand. He swallows thickly, pressing his lips into a thin line, and his eyes flit from the mark back up to Yassen’s ice-blue eyes, laser-focused on his.

“I may have once loved your father, Alex, but I also love you,” Yassen says, very close to Alex’s face. His warm breath fans across Alex’s cheek.

It’s the first time Yassen has given any indication that what he said on death’s door on Air Force One wasn’t a hallucination that Alex had made up.

“Um,” Alex mumbles. “I think that’s a rather bad decision on your part, but feel free to do whatever you want.”

“I will,” Yassen agrees, cocking his head. “Whatever I want, Alex?”

“Blanket authorization,” Alex replies weakly, forcing himself to take a deep breath when Yassen’s lean body closes in on his, forcing him back. Alex braces both his palms against the door behind him.

Yassen hums in acknowledgement. 

Alex stares at his defined, chiseled lips, off-limits until about two minutes ago. A hand drops to rest on his waist.

The assassin leans in as close as humanly possible without actually kissing him, his bare chest pressed against Alex’s front, heat radiating from him like a furnace. “Still sleepy, Alex?” Yassen murmurs against his lips.

A soft whine tumbles out of Alex’s throat.

Yassen grants him mercy, closing the remaining space between them and slotting their lips together. 

Alex thought that Yassen would kiss the way he kills: cold, detached, and almost clinical in nature.

Alex is wrong.

The effect is immediate. Alex melts into the kiss, actually reciprocated and soft and warm and like the hundreds of times he’s imagined it, sweet and slow until Alex keens into Yassen’s mouth and then he suddenly becomes pushier, nipping at Alex’s lower lip before biting down harder than necessary, producing a jolt of pain and a muffled cry from Alex. Yassen uses the opportunity to slide his tongue into Alex’s open mouth, pressing even more forcefully with the impatience of a starving man, cutting off Alex’s breath. Alex makes a feeble sound and tries to push Yassen away to gasp, to no avail, achieving no such success. Alex is dimly aware that Yassen tastes faintly of coffee and a hint of something sweet as the assassin’s free hand snakes around to the base of Alex’s head possessively, pushing him closer as he licks into his mouth with a heated fervor. 

It satiates the soul-deep agony in Alex, one that’s been crying for attention since that day in his primary school classroom. It breathes life into a dull, wilted seedling that was trapped in the dark and never given the opportunity to sprout. It sounds like another supernova going off in his head, except this time loud and odd like cymbals crashing in the middle of a quiet classical piece, and it feels like it, too, hot and explosive and colorful, a catastrophically bright implosion.

When Yassen finally pulls away, Alex feels weak-kneed, feels like he’s just drowned in the sun, a pool of bright, eternal warmth. He feels like that day when he spotted Yassen across the street, tangible and alive, sweating under the midday sun, perfectly positioned just-so, right above Alex, casting no shadow beneath his feet as his heart soared with renewed hope, but stronger.

His head falls back against the door with a light thump, a thrill shooting up his spine at the sharp and undisguised desire flickering across Yassen’s expression.

“This is nice,” Alex says, sounding a little breathless, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment, his senses overloaded. “We could have been doing this ages ago. Why weren’t we?”

Yassen’s body stiffens against him

Alex opens his eyes and glances up at him. “Did it not ever occur to you that I was acting like a lovesick teenager? Or that you were my soulmate?”

“I had entertained the thought, momentarily,” Yassen says, slowly.

“God, we’re both so fucking stupid,” Alex blurts, and then immediately slaps a hand over his mouth.

Yassen looks mildly affronted, but it morphs into placation and a sort of silent agreement.

“You’re right,” Alex declares. “It doesn’t matter. He’s dead and I’m not.”

Off to a decent start, he thinks.

“So what if he influenced a couple of years of your life? So what if he was my dad?” Alex feels his throat unintentionally tighten with emotion, his words quieting down to a near-whisper. “So what if he gave you a ring fifteen years ago that you still wear every day and smile and touch whenever you think about him?”

… Not so good end.

The cabin has never been as silent as Alex, stewing in his own humiliation. It seems even the constant rattling of the wind has paused for him to hear the stupid impulsiveness of his words.

Unexpectedly, Yassen laughs.

“Stop it,” Alex says, flushing red, a bit startled at the unexpected sound. He feels vaguely irritated at the faint look of amusement on the assassin’s face. “I’m trying to have a vulnerable moment here.”

“You were staring at me that much?” Yassen asks, mirth still coloring his tone. 

“Absolutely not,” Alex says. It is, of course, a barefaced lie.

“Hunter does occupy some of my thoughts,” Yassen confesses. “But not more than you do.”

“But not more than I do,” Alex says. “Huh.”

Yassen steps away from him and wiggles the ring slightly before slipping it entirely off his forefinger. “It is fitting you have my birth name on you. You make me feel like Yasha again, though I am not entirely sure if that is a good or bad thing.”

“Wait,” Alex says, watching Yassen walk up to and open one of the windows in the cabin. Like before, a chill immediately rushes in. “ _Now_ what are you doing?”

Yassen looks at his ring one more time. He proceeds to toss it out the window with a hefty throw, the way Alex wanted to just days prior.

“No!” Alex shouts in horror, clambering forwards just in time to watch the sun glint off the ring a final time before it disappears from sight, lost to the gaping maw of the ravine forever.

“Why would you do that?” Alex asks, still staring numbly out at the dark chasm. 

“Out of sight, out of mind,” Yassen replies simply.

“You’re—I’m—” Alex stammers weakly. Something is lodged in his throat. “You’re sure? This isn’t some honor thing? You’re not just… feeling sorry for me because I’m his son?”

Yassen nods.

“Are you certain?” Alex asks, hesitant almost, disbelieving. 

“I am as certain of it as I am certain the sun will rise tomorrow,” Yassen says. 

“There’s a really high chance of that,” Alex mutters. “A really, really high chance.”

Another chilly passing breeze seeps in through the open window. Alex trembles in response.

“You should say goodbye to Lyon,” Yassen says. There is a faint smile in his eyes. “Greece will be much warmer.”

As swell of emotion crests in Alex’s body, swelling and then crashing down like a wave against a helpless cliff side. Alex breathes in, his chest lighter than it has ever been his entire life. 

The second time he takes Yassen’s hand, Alex’s soul feels like it’s finally in motion again, this time in the proper trajectory, the one MI6 and Scorpia forcefully dragged him away from, moving upwards, outwards, and sunwards, towards Greece and a future mapped out with Yassen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's a wrap!! I've never really finished writing anything over 10k before so,, yay me? and now we have another soulmate au for the ar sock drawer! granted, it probably isn't the best of quality... but I had fun making alex suffer, hehe
> 
> (everyone writes yassen as super blank and professional 24/7 but, uh, I think I accidentally made him softer)
> 
> I have one more super short chapter still being polished up for you guys that's sort of a bunch of drabbles stuck together? but yeah!! thanks for reading, following along, and commenting!! I hope you enjoyed<3


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello and welcome to happy retirement drabbles for these two!!
> 
> (warning! very small tiny, tiny snippet of non-explicit smut below)

"By much warmer, I didn’t know you meant ‘warm’ as in Satan’s arsehole,” Alex groans the moment they step off the plane.

“You would prefer Moscow, then?” Yassen asks, arching an eyebrow.

“No,” Alex replies quickly. “No offense, but I'll take the warm.”

***

“... How much did this villa cost?”

“More than you can possibly ever afford.”

“Good thing I have you, then. Hey, do you think we can get a yacht?”

“I was thinking along the lines of something similar.”

***

“Yassen,” Alex whimpers, writhing against the silk sheets of their king-sized bed. “Stop _teasing_.”

Yassen ignores him, choosing instead to skim his fingertips over Alex’s inner thigh, feather light touches sliding all the way across to Alex’s soulmate mark.

Yassen leans down and drags his lips over the mark, mouthing at it playfully. He gently nuzzles against the skin before licking the mark, pressing the flat of his tongue over the smooth lettering. The assassin’s breath is hot against Alex’s skin before he bites down, hard and possessive right over his name. It _stings_ and singes and Alex cries out in pain, but the man doesn’t stop there—Yassen keeps his mouth over the area, keeps suckling and biting and lathing his tongue over the mark again and again, wetly sucking a livid bruise into Alex’s skin until he’s a quivering mess, body limp under the assassin and shaking all over. There’s a muffled pop when the man finally pulls away from Alex’s skin and then one last reverent kiss against the mark. A layered spike of need shoots up Alex’s spine at the idea of Yassen essentially worshiping the mark accompanied by a lurch of a satiated satisfaction, a wave of dizziness, knowing that it will bloom into a spectacular hickey that won’t be going away for a very, very long time, another additional mark indicating that Alex belongs to Yassen.

He vaguely registers that Yassen’s hands are on his hip bones, rubbing soothing circles into the skin with his thumbs.

Alex’s thighs tremble with arousal, his cock twitching against his belly, shiny and leaking with pre-come. A pitiful sound falls past his parted lips.

“Are you close already?” Yassen murmurs, sounding completely unruffled, unaffected, and very much amused.

“Bastard,” Alex wails, jerking against Yassen’s tight hold on his hips.

Yassen chuckles, low and sensual.

***

Alex groggily wakes up with the weight of an arm draped across his middle and the feeling of eyes blatantly on his face. "... Do you always watch me when I'm sleeping?"

"Yes," Yassen says without any shame whatsoever. "Go back to sleep, little Alex. The day is still early."

"Whatever you say, Yasha," Alex mumbles, eyes shut, already drifting away.

Yassen stares at him in wonder.

***

“What’s wrong, Alex?” Yassen’s voice is sharp, taut with an edge of worry.

Alex’s face remains buried in his palms, ignoring the assassin’s alarm. Alex tries to roll away from him even though they’re on the same sofa.

“Alex,” Yassen tries again.

“Don’t look at me,” Alex says, muffled.

“What’s wrong?” Yassen’s voice is soft.

Alex removes his face from his palms and glances up at the assassin miserably. “I think I really love you.”

“And you are upset at this because…?” Yassen tilts his head inquisitively.

Alex juts his lower lip out. “I really really love you.”

Yassen pauses. He says something quiet in Russian, something Alex can’t quite understand yet. He really needs to pick up the language.

“Me too,” Alex says. Yassen kisses his cheek in return. A cool hand brushes the hair from Alex’s forehead, which feels like it’s simultaneously on fire and in a pool of cold ice water at the same time, throbbing with an annoyingly loud headache.

“Ah. You are sick.”

“Am not.” Alex’s words are slurred. 

“Of course,” Yassen says and wrestles Alex back into bed despite his resistance.

Yassen later makes him a hearty dish that tastes like a cozy hearth opposite of two armchairs, something warm and heavy that melts in Alex’s mouth and chews perfectly between his teeth, thick and flavorful.

“What’s this dish called?” Alex asks, bundled up in just about every blanket in the villa.

“You wouldn’t be able to pronounce it,” Yassen replies, his usual nonchalance in place.

“Try me,” Alex challenges with the determined stubbornness he always carries with him the same way Yassen carries a gun.

Yassen feeds him another forkful to shut him up instead of deigning him with an answer that he’ll probably forget in about ten minutes. Alex hums appreciatively around the mouthful, allowing his eyelids to droop with an unusual fatigue. He pulls the blankets even closer to himself when he still feels colder than he should.

“Okay, maybe I am sick after all,” Alex finally concedes and thinks back to the way Jack tried her best to take care of him in place of Ian whenever his school phoned home to report his illness. He remembers the times he would wake up feverish and half-delirious and call for someone, for his long-dead parents, for his absent uncle, for his non-existent soulmate, for anyone at all from under his covers, but there was only ever an empty bedside to greet him when his fever broke and he sat up, alone, something cold clenching in his stomach, wondering if it was going to be like that forever.

“Can you…” Alex hesitates, “stay?”

“Where else would I go?” Yassen replies, giving him a rare reassuring smile, one that Alex wants to stitch into the back of his eyelids.

“Fuck,” Alex says in response, his brain to mouth filter absolutely gone. “I really love you.”

“You’ll regret being so loose-lipped later,” Yassen notes, gingerly combing Alex’s hair back with his fingers. It’s as soothing as the slight accent Yassen lets slip through in tender moments like these.

“I love you,” Alex says again, still thinking about the way the corners of the assassin’s lips tugged upward and the slight crinkle of Yassen’s eyes and the genuineness of it all, only for Alex. 

Alex’s eyes sting. 

Yassen kisses his tears away. 

Alex falls asleep to the unhurried cadence of Yassen’s soft voice and light caresses to his cheeks. He faintly feels Yassen touch his lips to Alex’s brow.

When he wakes up, fever broken, Yassen is still there.

Alex’s heart swells five sizes too large.

***

“Good morning,” Alex says sleepily, mid-yawn. “What’s for—”

He does a double-take. His eyes widen slightly.

“What are you—? What’s—What’s all that?” Alex stares at all the items laid out on the table.

“My knife collection,” Yassen says, placing the one he’s currently sharpening down with a faint clink.

Alex peers at the table. “What’s this almost rectangle one?”

“This is a Kamasu-Kissaki blade,” Yassen replies, taking the knife into his hand. “Japanese and as strong as most wakizashi and katanas despite its size. A bit like you. The Kissaki is the tip portion of the blade, forward to the yokote. Kamasu refers to a long-beaked fish with very little curvature, like this knife. There are about six variations of the Kissaki. I own three of those six forms.”

“Uh-huh,” Alex says, dazed at the number of words leaving Yassen’s mouth.

“Would you like to know about them?”

“No thanks,” Alex declines politely, eyeing the rather sharp looking blade between Yassen’s fingers. “Where’s breakfast?”

Yassen freezes. “... I forgot.”

Alex leans forwards and pecks Yassen on the lips, quickly pulling away before the assassin can reciprocate. 

“I can whip something up. You just keep playing with your...” Alex glances at the table, covered with too many sharp objects to count, “... knife collection.”

Yassen wordlessly gives him a fond look, regarding Alex affectionately with something remarkably soft in his eyes.

Alex nearly trips over absolutely nothing while hurrying away to the kitchen before the hot flush rising up his neck can explode onto his face and give him away.

***

“Are you ever going to tell me what the first name on your soulmate mark was from before you got shot?”

“Ian.”

“...”

“I am just kidding, Alex.”

“...”

“Alex? Where are you going? Come back to bed.”

***

“What are you doing?”

“Hold still, Yassen.”

“You know that permanent marker is not really permanent, yes? It will fade in three days.”

“I’ll rewrite it every three days, then.”

***

“So…” Alex begins, peering over Yassen’s shoulder and at the laptop sitting innocuously on the desk. “What’s the password to that thing, anyway?”

Yassen tilts his head slightly to look at him, an eyebrow arched. “You haven't figured it out yet? I didn’t even make it that difficult.”

Alex lets out an indignant sputter. “What?”

Yassen turns back to the laptop and slowly types out, s-i-c-i-l-i-a-n-c-o-f-f-e—

“Sicilian coffee beans? Are you having a laugh right now?” Alex’s voice is a bit high, accompanied by a thinly veiled embarrassment. Yassen taps his finger against the table, as if deeply contemplating his next words.

“Not at all,” Yassen replies. “I waited for you to give them to me. But you never did.”

“That’s because I hate you,” Alex says, his cheeks flushing brightly.

“You love me,” Yassen corrects. 

Alex hits him in the forearm. “I absolutely despise you.”

“You _love_ me.”

“Stop—talking!” Alex cries out in a strangled voice, suddenly overcome with affection. He tilts his head downwards and buries his face into the nape of Yassen’s neck to hide his reaction. His face is beet red. 

Yassen reaches back and pats Alex’s head placatingly.

Alex smacks him again. 

Tenderness spills out of his soul.

***

“Do you remember that time I accidentally woke you up? When I didn’t turn any of the lights on and you basically attacked me in the dark?” Alex asks, peeking over at Yassen.

Yassen inclines his head slightly to the right, acknowledging Alex’s question.

“Why did you pour the hot water first before putting in the tea bags? It’s always annoyed me when I think about it, especially since you normally put the tea bags in first,” Alex expands on his train of thought further. He glances over at Yassen and his eyes widen when he realizes that the assassin actually looks a bit sheepish.

“I was distracted,” Yassen admits.

“Distracted?” Alex echoes, confused. “Distracted by what?”

Yassen gives him a pointed stare.

“By—By _me_?” Alex blinks at the other man, bewildered.

“I could tell you had just woken up,” Yassen explains. “Your voice, your face, and… you were only wearing your boxers and one of my shirts. It was distracting.”

“What? No,” Alex protests. “There’s no way! I literally always made sure that I had trousers on. Except for whenever I went to sleep this last month. Well, I guess maybe not always…”

Yassen purses his lips. 

Alex’s eyes widen. “Is that why you left so quickly?”

Yassen looks away.

“Oh fuck,” Alex breathes in realization, clambering onto Yassen’s lap.

***

“Wait, so you seriously didn’t know that I…? I thought that I was being pretty obvious.”

“It wasn’t obvious to me.”

“I kissed you full on the lips when I saw that you were alive! What did you think of that, then?”

“... An accident?”

“ _Yassen_.”

***

Alex finds himself standing on a beach with a pair of red swim shorts, the soft soles of his bare feet burning in pain on the hot baked beach sand and his toes curling into its warm grittiness, accompanied by the hypnotic rolling of shallow waves, faint splashing, and seafoam licking at his ankles. He can taste the faint trace of salt permeating the air on his tongue with each breath. Every once in a while, a warm breeze, uplifting and peppy, tickles at his face and tousles the loose ends of his hair. 

There are no bandages around his right leg. His soulmate mark, just below the hem of his swim shorts, is bared for all the world to see.

Alex turns his head over his shoulder to peer at Yassen, not too far behind him.

Yassen tilts his head in acknowledgement.

The sun, closer to Earth than Alex has ever seen it before, hangs overhead with an effortless brightness, its golden rays gleaming off Yassen’s new ring.

Alex feels his face involuntarily stretch into a wide grin, bursting with contentment. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> finito :))
> 
> let me know if you enjoyed the fic, heh<3


End file.
